


Contradictory Wolves

by Serriya (Keolah)



Series: Interdimensional Bridge [45]
Category: Dungeons and Dragons - Fandom, Old World of Darkness
Genre: Chaos, Dimension Travel, Kitsune, Multi, Vampires, Werebats, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-28
Updated: 2006-08-31
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keolah/pseuds/Serriya
Summary: A meeting with vampires. An encounter with Kitsune. An exploration of a strange world of dire opposites of pattern and chaos. Just another adventure for a pack of Glass Walkers.





	1. Vampiric Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> I'm missing a good deal of text at the start of this. It's more _in media res_ than I would have intended, especially that it starts off at a bit of an awkward place. It would probably have made more sense in context. The events mentioned in passing by some characters had actually been written out. It'll have to do, though.

Rettah headed out from the Crux and down to the Nexus, perfectly happy to be away from the insane Elkandu. Tinemocun she figured was a nice tourist spot, the capital city and a rather pretty town she thought, so she went to aim the Nexus toward the gates of Tinemocun.

Her friends headed out as well — the Glass Walker, Keytar; the Camazotz, Darksong; and the incarnation of the Machine, Salara. Each of them had their own opinions on their recent encounters… and probably not wise to delve too far into the thoughts of the bat on that.

Salara broke off as they reached the Nexus and smiled. "I'm going to hop over to the Eyes of Truth," she said, "Check to see if anything needs a recalibration and that sort of thing. I'll catch up a little later, you kids have fun."

Rettah gave a wave and said, "Right, sure."

Salara gave a cheerful wave and disappeared to check things out. The other two were more than happy to go along with Rettah for the ride. Darksong might argue with that assessment if they'd made it known, at least in Keytar's case, but she'd feeling fairly charitable today and might not have.

Rettah activated the Nexus and set down herself, Keytar, and Darksong outside the gates of Tinemocun. It was currently night in this part of Lezaria, the two moons hanging in the sky. The guards standing at the gates looked them over, determined that they didn't appear to have more weapons than brain cells on them, and nodded them through.

Keytar commented, "Looks like a nice place."

"Wow, it doesn't look like it just got hit with an invading army of insane cultists," Rettah said as she headed inside.

They passed a cluster of goblins playing darts in one of the rooms along the corridor.

"Noooo, looks pretty calm and collected to me," Keytar agreed, smirking as they ran across the goblins… little buggers were getting to be a nuisance back home, if not quite such a pain as the occasional gremlin that popped up.

Darksong looked around with clear interest. "Those who dwell here must truly care about their home, to rebuild it so quickly."

Rettah gave a nod. The corridor led out into a wide courtyard/plaza/garden type place in the center of the city, with paved pathways winding between flower beds, trees, leading toward a fountain in the center. Near said fountain there appeared to be a pair of vampires making out, or something like that.

Keytar smirked at encountering the leeches and went to continue on, then blinked and looked back again. "Huh, wonder what she's doin' here?" he wondered, glanced over at Rettah with a grin. "That's Nicholas's sister, literally, talk about a screwed up way to go about family."

Rettah looked over toward them, quirking an eyebrow. Sarril noticed them and glanced up, blinking for a moment as shapeshifters were definitely not common on Lezaria, and poked Jasmine before licking the blood off his mouth. Jasmine murred in question, blinking around to take a look where Sarril's attention had wandered, somewhat grumpily, then chuckled as she sees who was there.

"Hiya. Keytar, wasn't it?" Jasmine said, "And… Darksong?" She'd met a lot more shapeshifters in passing than the reverse, keeping all the names straight of the wallpaper faces was a pain sometimes, "And who's your friend?" Another shifter, but not one she recognized.

"Rettah Eiram," Rettah replied, chuckling softly. "We're just um, passing through, sightseeing, don't mean to interrupt or anything, although you are doing that in a public place…"

"Doing what?" Jasmine asked innocently, a wisp of a grin appearing. It wasn't like it was anything that fell under 'indecent' in normal society, even if most people were going to look a little green at the idea. It was just, uhhhh, having a light snack. Yeah.

Rettah snickered softly, and glanced over her partner and said, "Hmm, Sarril Farmer I believe?"

Sarril nodded and gave a clumsy wave.

Keytar really didn't want to think about what was going on, the idea of a couple vamps making out not high on his list of turn-ons. Ugh. "Pleased to meetcha," he said politely, grins slyly aside at Darksong, "don't pay any attention if someone starts drooling, it's not their fault." She gave him a Look to turn a tree to a cinder, and he snickered.

"Looks like Streyka's been hard at work getting this place into shape again," Rettah said, glancing around at the gardens. "Seen her about?"

Jasmine smirked. "She's generally hiding out in her office, or dealing with the council, the girl definitely needs to learn to relax and have some fun."

"Figures," Rettah said, smirking and rolling her eyes a bit. "Politics, ick. Have a mind to go drag her off to a party or something. Sheesh."

Jasmine grinned. "Sure wouldn't do her any harm, god knows we've tried to get her out now and then." Sorta, occasionally. She chuckled lightly.

"Certainly needs it if she spends all her time knee-deep in government," Rettah said with snicker. "I don't care how much she claims to enjoy it, think she must be demented or something if she seriously does. Shall we?" she said in the general direction of Keytar and Darksong.

"Hey I'm always up for a good time." Keytar grinned. "No idea what the night life's like around here, though, so that'll be in your capable hands."

Darksong rolled her eyes, then grinned a little. "Much as it pains me to agree, I'm with him, and it sounds like it's for a good cause."

"Me either, but I'm sure there must be something to do around here." Rettah grinned faintly and said, "Besides suck on one another." She winked to the vampires, and gave a wave, and said, "Have fun." She headed off in the general direction she thought she remembered the government offices as being in.

"That's what she thinks," Jasmine murmured, grinned as they walked off, and promptly forgot about the interruption.

Keytar snorted lightly in amusement and disgust, commented quietly, "That was revolting."

Rettah smirked faintly at him. "Well, they are vampires… Though why they're sucking on each other, I have no idea. I didn't think they generally did that…" She shrugged and climbed up a set of stone stairs.

"Must be some kind of weird kink," Keytar snorted, taking the stairs at a leisurely pace.

Darksong grinned faintly. "Oh I don't know that I'd call that 'weird'."

Rettah giggled innocently and headed down the hallway, following some signs toward the Council Head's office. The door was ajar so she pushed inside after a perfunctory knock. There was a vampire inside with blonde hair and green eyes looking over a data terminal who glanced up at them when they came in.

"Streyka, I presume?" Keytar quirked a brow at the woman, grinned at the idea of dragging a leech out for a bit of fun… what the hell, he'd done stranger things, and looking at the office he definitely had to agree that she needed to get the hell out of it for a while.

"Streyka Wilder Chelseer Dragonblood," she introduced herself, giving a bow of the head. "May I help you with something? I have just finished up drafting a new agricultural bill and I am free for the moment."

Keytar would stick with Streyka, not understanding the fascination people around here seemed to have with these long drawn-out names… you'd swear they were Fangs or something, sheesh! "Well glad ta hear it." He grinned. "Just had a little chat with Jasmine and her chewtoy, and it sounds like you're spendin' way too much time in the office. We're the temp-eviction crew, time to get out and have some fun."

Streyka blinked for a moment. "Oh, I am? Well, maybe, there's been an awful lot to do lately…"

Rettah snickered softly and said, "Come on, we'll go hit the, well, whatever you people do around here for fun."

Streyka smirked faintly at the amazing display of lack of planning.

Keytar grinned and shrugged. "Gotta be someplace around here that serves the nightlife, can't all be dead as politics. Let it sit for a few hours, it ain't gonna blow up for it."

Streyka shrugged as well and turned off the terminal with a bit of a sigh and let herself get dragged off. "Just no karaoke, please," Streyka said with a smirk.

Rettah snickered and headed off to look for a bar or club or something.

Keytar laughed, heading back out. "For once, you're in just the right group for karaoke, at least you wouldn't have to worry about your eardrums." The idea struck him as immensely funny, not that he was going to look for a karaoke bar since there'd be others to mangle songs there.

"The trouble with karaoke is that you always get the drunken idiots thinking to try it out instead of the ones who can actually carry a tune," Streyka commented.

The first possible establishment they come across is called the "Blue Dragon Inn", to which Rettah took one look at and said, "Meh, too snooty," and headed off down the corridor further.

"Point, definitely a point," Keytar replied cheerfully and strolls along to see what can be found.

"Definitely not," Darksong agreed after only the briefest glance at the Blue Dragon, and grinned a little. "The object is fun, not meeting and greeting the upper crust."

The next place they found was called the "Dancing Zephyl", which displayed an animated neon sign of a dancing pink flying monkey outside it. Rettah gave an odd look to the sign and peered inside. It appeared to be a fairly rambunctious place.

"Too kitsch." Keytar smirked and prodded people on. "They're tryin' too hard. That's where your yuppies and wannabes are gonna be hangin' out, probably some angstburgers in the dark corners too. Next!"

Rettah snickered softly and headed down further down the corridor, down the stairs toward the first floor again. The next one they passed was the "Bloody Miasma Goth Bar", which Rettah didn't even pause in front of. Some ways down past that one they came across the "Eye of the Tempest Bar and Grill".

"Looks like your kinda place," Keytar remarked innocently in passing the goth bar to Darksong, who smacked him in the back of the head with a grin. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he laughed lightly, grinned as they moved on and ran across the new place. "Well this has potential…"

He looked it over. It wasn't too classy, not too gothy, there was decent music playing inside and the smell of good food drifting out.

Rettah sniffed at the air and said, "Oh, look, they have a special on ribs tonight."

"Sounds good ta me," Keytar said and headed in, then grinned aside. "Though it's not gonna do much for our wayward entertainment-starved vamp." He looked over at Streyka. "Definitely gotta get you talkin'."

Streyka said with a smirk, "That's funny, people are usually wanting to get me to shut up. Well, at least some of the Elkandu who are afraid that I might try to mind-control them or something."

Rettah snickered and headed inside and grabbed a table, and promptly orders a bit plate of ribs when the waiter turned up. Streyka opted for the Stygian blood wine. Darksong opted for both, sticking her tongue out at the 'ugh' from Keytar who went with Coke and the ribs.

"Hey, I know how the Voice works," he replied with a shrug and a faint smile. "Though why you're usin' it now is anyone's guess."

Streyka shrugged sheepishly and said, "Well, I've never been able to really turn it off…"

The waiter arrived shortly with their orders and Rettah proceeded to munch on her ribs eagerly.

"Not bad…" Darksong murmured appreciatively, sipping at the wine, then broke into the food.

Keytar paid a bit of attention to the ribs for a minute, puzzling a bit, then asked, "Okay, so why can't you turn it off? I've gotta consciously want to use it."

Streyka said, "I don't really know. It's just always been on, I don't know for how long since I was the first Speaker the Elkandu encountered, they didn't know what to make of me and didn't even realize I was doing anything at first, and I certainly didn't. It only became all the worse after I was Embraced, but at least by that point I knew what I was doing… Still couldn't turn it off though."

Keytar smirked, shook his head. "No wonder you stick with politics and hiding out in your office, that's gotta make people a little twitchy if they have any idea what that little extra lilt means."

"Yeah, and after that little Aitur incident…" Streyka said, shaking her head. "I'm generally just careful not to tell anyone or ask anyone anything directly unless it's necessary, don't even tend to say much at council meetings, rather let my policies speak for themselves and not think people are only going along because of that…"

"Ever thought of getting a filter implant, or installin' a white noise generator?" Keytar asked, thinking like a Glass Walker first, technology had an answer for everything.

Streyka just looked at him oddly. "Um, not generally, no. Hell, I'm afraid I'd still be using paper around here if Suzcecoz hadn't installed those computers a few years back… And damned if I know if something like that would even work on a vampire…"

Keytar grinned, gnawed the last bit of meat off a bone and wiped his hands off. "Well see, that's why you need to keep up to date and not let the dust gather. Might be surprised what could be done with a little ingenuity, I'm sure Gadget could cook somethin' up for ya that'd let you decide whether it's going through, or that generated some kind of damping field for meetings."

Streyka finished her glass of wine and called for another. "I don't know that I'd care to go through the trouble, anyway…"

Keytar shrugged. "Dunno about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to have that kinda problem hangin' over my head. Gotta be a pain to watch what you're sayin' all the time just so you don't end up influencing someone with it. Somethin' ta think about, I doubt it'd be all that much 'trouble'." He smirked.

"I don't know," Streyka said, shrugging. "Perhaps. Though after all these centuries I'm fairly used to that by now."

"Hey, your loss." Keytar grinned. "Gadget's done some real interesting things on the tech side, even been corresponding with the Eyes of Truth, and if that ain't enough to make people worry I don't know what is." He smirked.

"I would think Suzcecoz is bad enough as it is," she said with a smirk. "I don't even begin to understand a fraction of the things she does, but it works I suppose…"

"Right. Suzcecoz." Keytar chuckled. "Don't think she's gonna be available for that sorta thing for a while, not with the new job and all."

"Hmm?" Streyka said, drinking her blood wine thoughtfully and glancing over toward the far end of the room. Oh dear, it appeared that someone was setting up a karaoke machine.

Keytar smirked. "Seems she got herself a brand new gig from Shazmar, lookin' after the Order side of things here. Salara could probably explain a bit better." He shrugged.

Streyka blinked for a moment. "Oh," she said, sighing softly as the assault of drunken singing rang out. She rolled her eyes and climbed to her feet and proceeded to head over there.

Keytar winced, mock glared at Rettah. "I thought you had a no torture clause going…"

Darksong grimaced, smirked, and pushed away from the table to head over there as well, she didn't dress aggressively for nothing after all, it went with the personality.

Streyka tapped the drunk on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, sir, but I must request that you step away from the karaoke machine."

He stepped away, then blinked as he realized who it was.

Darksong was a little more direct and ducked around to disconnect the machine, not wanting the next batch of idiot drunks to hop right back into the breach. She looked thoughtfully at the connection, considered ripping the damn thing out, but… nah, not feeling too violent at the moment, she'd save that for the next ones.

The drunk mumbled some nervous apologies in the general direction of Streyka as she went to pick up more wine before returning to her seat. "Damned drunken idiots," she said.

A refill sounded like a delightful idea. Darksong licked her lips lightly and retrieved one before heading back to the table. "Mmyeah," she said with a smirk after taking a sip, "That's the problem with the bar scene sometimes, and the one advantage to a goth bar in that you're not going to find one of those infernal devices there."

"And the big disadvantage that most of the people at a goth bar, you end up wanting to watch them slit their own wrists…" Streyka muttered with a smirk, licking her lips a bit as she drank her blood wine.

"Nothing wrong with that." Darksong grinned. "Entertainment and a snack, and the best part is they do it to themselves. They're so amusingly depressive."

"It's almost a pity to know that this wine was made from the 'waters' of the River Styx and not from numerous depressive wannabe goths," Streyka commented wryly.

Darksong blinked in faint surprise, took another sip of the wine to taste it again, "There's some sort of artificial supply? It tastes, well, like it should."

Keytar just snorted and dug in to the remaining ribs, deliberately shutting out the weird blood fascination.

"Not really 'artificial' exactly," Streyka said. "The rivers of Mezulbryst are rather weird. I take it you haven't been that way yet? There's the River Acheron, of molten lava, the Lethe, of alcohol, the Cocytus, which is frozen solid, and the River Styx, which is blood…"

"Oh my," Darksong replied, and would be drooling right about now if she wasn't above that sort of thing. Food was important, of course, but her branch of the Camazotz actually thrived on a blood diet and required at least a little now and then to stay healthy. "That sounds, mm, interesting."

"That and the fact that there's no sun there tends to imply that Mezulbryst has a rather thriving vampiric population," Streyka said, smirking. "Iron City's a pretty rough place, though. There's a bunch of demons and goblins and trolls and such there too…"

"I'll have to remember to bring along the mace." Darksong smirked.

Keytar couldn't resist tossing in, "And she ain't talkin' the chemical spray, the sucker's gotta weigh a good fifteen pounds…" He grinned at her. "Probably good on those lonely mornings too, huh?"

She lifted a hand, gave him the finger, then returned to her wine with a chuckle.

Streyka snickered quietly.

Rettah licked some sauce off her fingers and looked down at the empty plate that had previously been filled with ribs. "You know, it seems like we're always eating. I feel like Ylanwad. But I hear regular meals are important for uh, not starving…"

"Hey, gotta keep those energy levels up." Keytar grinned. "Otherwise ya end up falling asleep on your feet in no time."

"Sleep is uh, useful too, yeah," Rettah said, grinning playfully.

Streyka chuckled softly.

"Sleep is highly overrated," Darksong commented with an innocent angelic smile.

Keytar snickered. "Catch up on sleep when you're dead."

"I was, of course, referring to 'sleep' and not sleep," Rettah said with a wink, giggling softly.

Streyka rolled her eyes smirking.

"Ah yes, sleep and not sleep-sleep, I see." Darksong grinned. "Forget my earlier comment then, that's certainly not to be missed. A body will just fall to pieces without it."

Rettah grinned some more, and Streyka said, "Great, I'm being taken out for 'fun' by a bunch of horny shapeshifters… What is wrong with this picture?" She snickered softly.

"Why whatever would you say is wrong with it?" Darksong asked lightly, glancing over at Streyka and grinning a little.

Keytar gave her a look, wondering if she was serious or just playing around… the idea was enough to make those ribs sit like a brick in his stomach. Eck.

Streyka snickered softly and said, "Ah, whatever." She got yet anther glass of blood wine.

Rettah said, "But they were rather good ribs."

"Sure beats the local O'Tolley's." Keytar smirked, took a sip of his beer and sighed in repletion.

Darksong smiled slightly. "Mm, indeed, it's rather difficult to find a good wine at a place like that."

"What's an O'Tolley?" Streyka wondered obliquely as she drank her wine.

Rettah opted to not stuff herself with more ribs and just got a beer instead.

"Fast food joint," Keytar replied. "Been around forever, even if they did have some major problems like a hundred years back when someone found out they were a front for Bane infestation and tainting the public. Free possession with every meal!" He smirked.

Streyka blinked for a moment and said, "I'll presume that's something like a demon? Uh, yeah, I can see why that'd be a bad thing."

"They got some new management in," Keytar chuckled. "Darksong's been around the city longer, she's probably heard some of the details involved."

Darksong grinned. "Oh yes, seems they ran into some trouble when a couple of the local bloodkin decided to make a game out of tracking down and spoiling the plans of a certain unpleasant bastard of the Spiral."

Streyka just gave her a blank look, having entirely lost the train of the conversation somewhere along the way. Rettah snickered softly and drank her beer.

Darksong laughed lightly, lounging back in her chair and took a sip of the delightful wine before explaining further. "See, there were two of the bloodkin that were on decent terms with the shapeshifters. Both of them were of considerable power and influence in the city, and when one Jez'kai approached one and tried to get the better of him in a business dealing, he took it somewhat amiss. Now the one who was approached was this old-style Torrie, in fact," she paused in thought, "I think he's the sire of one of your guests, Jasmine. At any rate, when he found out just who and what the sneaky so-and-so was, he did what the bloodkin delight in, he made a game out of making the bastard miserable. He and one of the Ventrue in the city were old friends, so they had a little competition. They'd spend a year tracking down little side projects and closing them down or making them unprofitable, then compare notes at the end of the year just to see who'd been the bigger pain in the neck. One of those years involved setting up a new chain of restaurants to overshadow O'Tolley's, since Jez'kai was involved with them, and they put them into bankruptcy, then bought the entire chain."

Streyka listened attentively to the story and chuckled lightly in amusement. "Sounds like an amusing turn of events, I'd say. All that over a fast food franchise? Mmh." She drank some more wine.

"That's the type of games the bloodkin play back home," Darksong chuckled, then grinned lightly at Streyka. "They spend so much time in their cities and their havens, never stepping beyond the bounds of their little circles that they have to find something to have fun with."

Streyka snorted lightly. "I don't generally travel around much myself, but I surely don't play games just for the fun of it. Been enough of a hassle getting things rebuilt after the Chaos invasion lately…"

"And how often do you get out of your musty office, hmm?" Darksong asked archly. "Like the old saying goes, 'all work and no play…'."

"Well, the Council meets once a month, and I'm frequently meeting with representatives of the various races and nations on off-nights as well…"

Darksong just Looked at her severely. "That is not what I meant." she grins a little, "You really do need to get out more, socialize, and just have some fun, or you're going to turn to stone."

"Stone? I rather doubt that, Tashin got destroyed ages ago and the quarter of a plane she'd petrified was reverted," Streyka said. She grinned innocently.

Darksong snorted lightly, smiled as she took a sip of her wine. "Mm, well at least you have a sense of humor, shows you're not a total loss. Yet."

"Hmm, I don't really know why Jami had the bright idea of creating a golem that turned things to stone in the first place. Then again, I'm not sure why he decided to create a demi-plane representation of Hell, including a tacky kitchen with a design from the 1950's…"

Darksong smirked. "One thing I'll definitely give you, you've got the politician's touch for avoiding and changing the subject. Shame on you."

"Hey, I'm socializing, aren't I?" Streyka said innocently. "Or something of that nature at least, at any rate, I suppose…"

Darksong laughed lightly. "I suppose, after a fashion. No more bringing up work, though, that's the whole point to having and evening out, even if you're kidnapped into it." She grinned.

"So how about instead I tell you about the time that my husband brought back an alternate of me from another timeline so he could have four wives?"

"Sounds like a great guy." Darksong smirked. "And just how did he expect to not get torn to pieces over that 'brilliant' little idea?"

"It was awfully confusing at first," Streyka said. "Well, it wasn't entirely his fault. He went to that timeline in the first place to hide from Jami, not exactly an uncommon thing in those days. Then he came back because his timeline was being taken over by Aitur. And he was so sweet that he didn't want to leave me and Angelita behind."

"Mm-hmm," Darksong murmured, grinning faintly as she listened to the soap operatic tale.

"Well, that wasn't quite as confusing as the time the angel Adrienna, her demon half Armina, her rebirth Angelita, and the Angelita from the other timeline who was calling herself Catalina, all had one big confusing lesbian orgy that ended up turning them all into metamorphs… Okay, I say 'lesbian' but technically there were some hermaphrodites in there and with the metamorphdom there were probably plenty of genitalia popping about…"

Keytar coughed, but didn't comment on the tale, clearly amused.

Darksong raised her brows. "That certainly sounds like an… mm, interesting situation, if just a trifle confusing, as you say."

Streyka gave a nod and said, "Yeah, the deal with the alternate of me and Angelita ended up getting solved by us merging with our alternates. I'm sure Ishane was disappointed to go back to having two wives instead of four," Streyka said, rolling her eyes.

Darksong smirked. "I'm sure. That seems all the rage to some, at least until they find out that women aren't just…" she snorted lightly, grinned, "I won't get started on _that_ little rant."

Keytar muttered something suspiciously like 'Thank Gaia', and earned a sharp glare.

"Of course, Ishy's dead now, so now I've just got a wife and no husband anymore," Streyka said, shrugging faintly. "Well, aside from the screwed up version of him from another timeline hiding somewhere or another to avoid being killed by somebody… but nevermind."

'Sounds like you lucked out' seemed somehow inappropriate, even if Darksong did think it, and she smiled slightly. "I'm sorry to hear that, it had to be difficult for you."

"Well, I could have told him nuking an entire universe was a bad idea," she said, smirking. "Whatever, he'll get reborn sooner or later. Not like we were that close at the time anyhow. Hell, not like I see Angelita all that often lately either."

"So you hide out from the world and do all the things that are not to be mentioned," Darksong chuckled lightly. "Don't you have any friends or hobbies to play with when you're not getting abducted?"

"Well, my sire's apparently busy fooling around with Jasmine," Streyka said. "My childer and grandchilder are all scattered around and don't come to visit much…."

"They did seem a little attached at the neck," Darksong replied drily, and chuckled as she got up. "I'll get us a refill, be right back." She took Streyka's glass with a wink and walked over to do so.

Streyka chuckled softly and nodded, leaning back relaxing and listening to the music playing.

Rettah said, "I don't know, I think it'd must be awfully dull myself."

"As a spoon," Keytar agreed with a chuckle. "I guess there's gotta be some appeal to it though, since there never seems to be a shortage of people wanting to get into politics."

Darksong returned and set the glasses back out, then took a seat again.

Streyka snorted softly and said, "Most of the people wanting to get into politics are only doing it to advance their own agendas and benefit themselves or their friends and relatives, and not to actually improve government policy and make the world a better place to live."

"I guess that's why they call it the world's second oldest profession, and so close to the first." Darksong smirked. "At least with the first they're honest about it."

Streyka snickered, taking a drink of her wine. "That's why I tend to tell them off and not let them screw over the planet for their own benefit," Streyka said.

"It definitely seems to be working, if what we've seen so far is any indication." Darksong smiled. "No riots in the streets, no sirens as neighborhoods burn to the ground… nice, quiet little place."

Streyka chuckled softly. "I would surely hope not. I'll prefer to leave that sort of thing to Mezulbryst."

"Do you ever 'get away' there for a while?" Darksong asked lightly. "It would certainly seem like the ideal vacation spot, where you wouldn't be known on sight and there'd be no shortage of food or entertainment to be had."

Streyka shrugged. "The only reason I'd ever really go there is to remind myself where I'm here and not there. I don't really like Iron City. Even if it does boast more varieties of alcohol than you care to count and has some wild parties." She smirked.

Darksong chuckled. "Who said anything about staying in this Iron City? The entire planet can't be that bad, and you could just hop over for a bite now and then, or bring one along." She grinned.

"Well, Stygia's not such a pleasant place either, especially for the undead…" Streyka said. "But Schade and Ameliel aren't so bad. Aside from, you know, the fact that Ameliel is near a river of molten lava and all."

Darksong laughed lightly. "Oh fine, fine, so you've knocked that world out of the field for a little getaway, surely there's somewhere you'd want to go to escape from it all for a bit?"

"Well, Torn Elkandu's fun if you can avoid the worst of the freaks…" Streyka said, and Rettah snickered at that. "Devenia and Corstad are amusing, and Wilderplane's not too bad…"

"I'm sure Torn Elkandu's positively delightful if you don't run across the insane shapeshifter and his friend," Darksong snorted, the brightened with a fiendish grin, "Though there would be some entertainment value in putting him through a sieve."

"If you're talking about Azale and Sedder… the sad thing about is that they're related to me," Streyka said, sighing. "Not that that's saying much. The Chelseers are related to just about everyone."

"You poor, poor woman," Darksong saidwith exaggerated sincerity, then grinned. "Every family's got to have the sheep that you'd rather see shorn, I suppose."

"They have this saying. The Chelseers don't have a family tree. We have a family kudzu," Streyka said, smirking in amusement.

"And if that's not enough to make you want to hide out where no one can find you, I don't know what is," Darksong chuckled.

"I do not believe that I have been to the World of Darkness myself, however, although I believe that my great-grandsire originated from there at some point…"

"You might like it or you might not," Darksong said. "There are a great many more bloodkin there than I've seen running around here, but…" she smirked, "There's always one of those, isn't there? They do so enjoy their games, generally playing politics amongst themselves."

"There are a total of sixty-five vampires on the planet Lezaria," Streyka replied. "On the entire planet. Sixty-two of those are my descendents. And we've been rather strict about any of them misbehaving."

Darksong laughed lightly. "Oh yes, there are a good deal more there. Selenis alone has nearly two thousand, and that's just one of hundreds of cities across the world. The bloodkin reside in them all."

"Yeah, well, we've been awfully careful not to embrace losers and twits." Streyka grinned. "For the most part at any rate…"

"You've been listening to your guest, haven't you?" Darksong grinned. "Oh, the bloodkin aren't all losers and twits." She bestowed a stilling glare on Keytar who's looking a little too innocent, then continued, "Most of them are normal people, with all the, mm, foibles that entails."

"Oh, no, I'm not saying they all are, certainly," Streyka said. "I'm just saying with that many, it's inevitable that there are plenty of twits among them."

"Of course, just like you're going to find at least one redneck moron who wants to drag out the caterwauling karaoke station at a perfectly decent hangout," Darksong replied lightly.

"Exactly," Streyka said with a grin. "But sadly, while I cannot have all the idiots in the world locked up, I can make sure they don't get embraced." She smiled.

"There is something to be said for that," Darksong agreed. "And I suppose some small amount of reason to stay closeted away."

Streyka shrugged. "I don't really try to avoid people or stay holed up. I just get caught up in my work and don't realize it until months pass…"

"Don't make me drop by and drag you out of your hole now and again." Darksong smiled. "I'll do it, you know."

"Heh," she said, smirking. "Jasmine said that too, and I think she got a little um, distracted…" Streyka snickered softly.

Darksong smirked. "Well the bloodkin are known for getting absorbed in things and completely forgetting about the passage of time, at least until they get hungry enough."

"Doubt that'll happen anytime soon, what with the enchanted blood fountain in the special guest quarters," Streyka said. "Of course, it's not like I could tell my own sire to get off his ass and do something, anyway."

"Sure you could." Darksong grinned slyly. "Though he might be a little annoyed at you after realizing just what you'd done."

"Welll yeeesss," Streyka said, smirking broadly. "But that's beside the point. I ain't gonna."

"No, I don't suppose that's your way, and a good thing." Darksong smiled. "Still, if you're going to get lost in what you're doing, someone's going to have to dig you out now and then."

Streyka chuckled softly. "I suppose." She shrugged. "Not that most people ever really cared about what the hell I was up to before."

"Well that doesn't mean they shouldn't." Darksong grinned. "Unless you prefer to be left alone, a social butterfly pinned to the wall of a dusty, drab, dreadfully dull office."

"Well, not especially, no," Streyka said, grinning. "Ever since Tempest broke up, things just haven't been the same…"

"Good, so it's agreed," Darksong replied definitively. "You're going to get out once in a while even if it means dragging you out kicking and screaming, and unlike certain others I'm not likely to forget!"

"Certain others have been holed up sucking on one another seemingly nonstop for months," Streyka said, rolling her eyes in a bit of disgust and sighing.

"Mm." Darksong grinned faintly. "Considering the effects for the bloodkin, I can't say that I blame them. I'm sure they'll wake up to the world around them eventually, they seemed at least semi-alert when we ran across them earlier."

"Oh, I'm sure they're having lots of fun," Streyka said dryly, chuckling. "But yeah. I guess I could stand to get out more…"

"Get out and see the light of night," Darksong replied, smiling. "Take a minute or two to really enjoy what you're putting all that work into. A real shame to let the world pass you by for an eternity."

"Hey, at least I'm not like certain Elkandu who sit around in their basements for decades at a time." she said, grinning. "I'm not sure I care to know what's going on down there…"

"Maybe toss a crazy shapeshifting relative down there to find out and lock the door behind him?" Darksong suggested innocently.

"He does tend to have a habit of getting into trouble that way, even without encouragement…"

"Must have a knack for getting out of it, worse luck," Darksong muttered, then smirked. "Sorry, I didn't get the best impression of him, but then I don't have a lot of patience for fools."

"Nobody gets the best impression of him," Streyka said, smirking some more. "He just hasn't been right in the head ever since the Shai incident."

"Well I suppose every village has to have one," Darksong smirked.

"He took her death really hard… and well, I suppose jumping into a column of raw chaos probably wasn't good for his sanity either for that matter…"

"Wait, was this the same person that blood bound him?" Darksong asked, quirking a brow.

Streyka gave a nod. "Yeah, her. Shai Zanite, Tempest Blood Mage and all around pain in the ass."

"And you're saying that he took her death hard and went crazy over it?" Darksong asked incredulously.

"Uh-huh," Streyka said. "He is, in fact, a good deal saner and more stable than he was for a while there. He was nuttier than a bowl of cashews for a while there. Went time-hopping too, and that surely didn't help either…"

"I've heard of masochists, but that seems a bit much." Darksong snorted lightly. "Yes, the blood bond can twist emotions and even will, but that's ridiculous."

"No kidding," Streyka said "She'd bound Sedder too, and he was perfectly fine after it was broken, certainly. Sheesh."

"Of course it could be that he truly cared for her." Darksong shrugged faintly. "The blood bond will intensifty that as well, especially over time." She actually knew a great deal more about vampires than most shapeshifters cared to, her line had no problem with and often befriended them.

"I don't know what all passed on between them," Streyka said. "Not sure I care to. But don't let his apparent incompetence and madness fool you — he is very good at what he does, he's the best Traveller the Elkandu have, hands down, and one of the best Seekers and Psionicists as well…"

"That doesn't mean much to me." Darksong smiled faintly. "I haven't had a chance to get familiar with what these Elkandu call things." She chuckled, "I've been away from home less than a day."

Streyka chuckled softly and said, "Sorry. Traveller is what we call someone who practices the abilities of teleportation, usually involving moving themselves or other people from place to place. Azale is particularly skilled at precision teleportation, that is, he can summon a small object out of someone's pocket from another planet entirely, to his hand."

"I'll make sure to have the anti-pickpocket software upgraded," Darksong replied drily.

Streyka snickered. "A Seeker, now, is someone who uses divination. They can read auras, scry distant locations, discover the contents of someone's pockets, that sort of thing. Psionicists are people who use mental abilities, such as mind-reading, mind-control, and such…"

"On second thought, I think I'll just stay far, far away from him," Darksong said brightly, "Out of sight, out of mind… out of mace range." She grinned

"That won't help," Streyka said, smirking. "Distance doesn't mean much to a Traveller of his skill, if he got it into his head to do something. At least he's been putting his abilities to some productive use… he runs the Elkandu newspaper, the Daily Seeker."

Keytar piped up, "But maybe without her to aggravate him, maybe he'll forget about her. It's easy enough to do." He grinned as Darksong gave him a Look.

"You're really cruising tonight, Key." She smirked and turned back to Streyka, "He does have a point, though, the 'out of sight, out of mind' thing goes both ways."

Streyka chuckled softly and nodded. "Provided he's not, you know, listening in on any conversation one might have. He's, well, apparently the only non-divine-entity these days that I know of who can bypass almost any ward…"

"And how terribly would you miss him were some horrible accident to befall him?" Darksong asked with deliberate, playful innocence.

"Oh, I'd think everyone except Sedder would either not care, or throw a party," she said, smirking again. "But metamorphs are notoriously hard to kill."

"Well that's disappointing to hear," Darksong said with a pout, glares pointedly in Keytar's direction, then chuckled as she looked back. "Oh don't mind me, he was just annoying, not someone to earn everlasting hatred or anything."

She chuckled softly. "Yeah, physical injury doesn't do much to them, not even just because of insane regenerative abilities, but because even a clearly fatal injury wouldn't slow them down much since they don't actually need their organs to survive."

"Yeeeah, I kinda got the impression of that from looking at the vat of goop over at Gadget's house of horrors," Keytar said, "Didn't even take much to assimilate the original shapeshifting abilities. Definitely weird stuff."

"I suppose it stands to reason, though. If you can turn into an inanimate object with no problems, you probably didn't need the heart and lungs and such anyway. Only way to really fuck them up is certain kinds of magic, energy, electric such weapons, enchanted weapons or things with inherent magical properties like silver or luminite…"

"I haven't checked out the silver thing," Keytar replied. "Still a little fresh, but I'm not sure if I'd be more surprised if it did or didn't still do some nasty damage. That goes way back in folklore, as some kinda 'pure' metal." He shrugged.

Darksong added, "Not that there aren't a few breeds with gold problems instead."

"Silver's got some interesting natural properties," Streyka said. "So does gold, for that matter. Both hold enchantments quite well, too. Though I suppose for in-depth analysis of that sort of thing, you'd have to ask my cousin Calring, she's the expert on enchantments around here."

"That's more the domain of Theurges and high-rankers, thanks," Keytar chuckled. "Well, and the occasional loon who flaps by night."

Darksong snorted lightly. "It's certainly not my fault the Garou are wagging their tails all over the place while we're more solitary and refined." She sniffed disdainfully.

Streyka chuckled. "She's a good one to go to for any random enchantment needs, too. If, for some reason, you really need an enchanted something-or-other, at least. And don't mind the waiting period. Heh."

"Something to definitely keep in mind." Darksong nodded, grinned. "And a wait isn't any great trial, all the time in the world to test the winds."

"So if you've just arrived in this universe then, perhaps you haven't become acquainted yet with the most popular of the Elkandu's magical inventions, the bag of holding," Streyka said. "Just about everyone carries at least one, they're quite the handy things…"

"Bottomless storage?" Darksong asked, chuckles lightly. "Those aren't unheard of back home, though they're as rare as any other fetish."

"You can pick them up at a shop in Torn Elkandu or in the Corstad Mall, they've got whole racks of the things," Streyka said. "I guess somebody at some point realized 'Hey, these things are handy!' and started churning them out for a profit or something. I can just imagine a back room with a bunch of halflings all enchanting bags or something…"

Darksong looked suitably delighted at the idea of that, then laughed at the image Streyka provided, "Are you sure halflings? I'd think more the cobbler's elves, or at least their backwoods cousins."

"Technically, I am a half-elf, myself, but still," Streyka said, grinning a bit. "But eh, elves are too mundane, they're all over the place…"

"Hmm," Darksong mused, "I'd say gremlins, since they're thankfully rare enough, but then you'd have to worry about the bags blowing up or eating people whole." She snickered.

Streyka snickered softly. "The Corstad Mall has all kinds of things for sale, now. They like to brag that they'll sell anything. I'm not so sure about 'anything', but they've got quite the… variety, certainly."

Keytar groaned melodramatically, "Oh please, don't talk about malls… next thing you know I'm gettin' my tail dragged off to tromp endlessly through one."

Darksong hmmed and gave him a malicious grin.

Streyka grinned at him also. "Hey, it's the biggest mall in the universe, after all. You know, they also sell fur-repellant furniture, too." She winked.

"Y'know, that'd be a great idea for someplace havin' metis cubs or animal breeds runnin' around," Keytar mused, then squinted his eyes, "What am I sayin'? Ugh. Shopping baaaaaaad!"

Streyka giggled in amusement.

Rettah said, "Much as I hate to sound like, you know, a woman, the Corstad Mall is a very… interesting place."

Keytar looked from one to the next imploringly, trying to find some hope of escape, then sighed resignedly as he found varying degrees of amusement. "I know when I'm licked," he said, then snickered as he drained his beer at the possible innuendo to the phrase.

"Ah, it'll be good to get out of town for a little while, I guess," Streyka said, stretching and standing up.

"Definitely!" Darksong agreed cheerfully and stood, smirking.

Keytar rolled his eyes and followed suit, "Oh relax, this'll be fun." He snorted and muttered, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing more fun than going to the mall. Whee!"

Streyka chuckled softly and Recalled, Rettah momentarily following suit, and glanced over to check the current time at the Corstad Mall. Darksong waited a heartbeat to make sure that Keytar actually went, or at least gave the pretense of it as she punched him lightly in the shoulder. They Recalled and waited in various patient or long-suffering modes.

"Great, midnight at the mall, let's go," Streyka said, going over to set the Nexus and activate it.


	2. The Corstad Mall

The Nexus set them down at a plaza outside a large multi-storey building, the starry sky lit by a lavender-colored gibbous moon and a fountain bubbling in the center of the plaza.

"The mall to end all malls…" Darksong intoned in her best announcer's voice, a credible effort, then grinned. "Well let's go see what they've got. I'm going to see if they really have _everything_."

Streyka grinned and headed for the wide double sets of glass doors to the north of the plaza marking the entrance to the mall. It was quite active inside, people of various races milling about munching on food, chatting, carting around recent purchases, or window shopping. Signs along the windows advertised a wide variety of items for sale.

"Of course," Keytar remarked with idle malicious humor, "You _do_ realize that the currency here is probably something far different from home, right?"

Darksong turned her head to stick her tongue out at him, clearly more playful than aggressive at the moment. "I don't care, it's still going to be fun to look around."

Streyka pointed ahead to a booth labeled "Bank of Corstad - We do currency conversions from 83 planets", and it appeared that the number had been changed and repainted a number of times.

"So hah!" Darksong retorted, grinning as he groaned, and turning a wink to Streyka.

Streyka chuckled softly and meandered over that way.

Rettah said, "Convenient. I wonder if they've added your world yet?"

Apparently, from looking over the list of available conversions, it would appear that they had. Darksong proceeded to dig out some cash and made the necessary transaction.

Keytar smirked, "Gee, I wonder if they take credit?" The idea of cross-universe credit cards is amusing, but he _did_ keep some cash on hand just to make O Mighty Dolla happy.

Rettah said, "Technically, the main currency on Corstad is credits, they just wave around these little bits of plastic all the time…"

The booth was being run by a leprechaun who was more than happy to convert their currency and hand them Corstad credit cards.

Keytar laughed. "They have their own credit cards. Sharp, very sharp. I'll have to remember to bring more cash along to convert the next time around." Not that any Corporate Wolf worth their salt didn't have an obscene amount of cash on hand compared to your average city-dweller, and he ended up converting a few thousand. "Ready as I'll ever be, I guess." He smirked.

They turned and headed out along one of the corridors, a shining paragon of capitalism sprawling before them. The shops displayed a variety of items for sale, enchanted and mundane, including swords, guns, jewelry, clothing, and, of course, bags.

Both Keytar and Darksong were a little more practical than the last shopper to go through here and settled on pocket bags, though it was inevitable that Keytar teased Darksong that she needed a purse… so she looked around for one and beaned him with it, then smirked and headed to the counter to pay.

Rettah and Streyka, naturally, already had bags, having both hung around the Elkandu long enough to know how handy they were. There's a three-foot-tall woman with pink hair and butterfly wings working the counter today, and she asked, "Color changes are free of charge with purchase. Would you like them to be another color?"

"Black's good for me, goes with everything in my wardrobe," Keytar smirked.

Darksong opened her mouth to say something, glanced at their companions with mischief glittering in her eyes, and bit her lower lip. "Umm, I'm fine, thanks."

"Alright, thank you," she said, handing back their cards and says, "Have a nice night." She smiled brightly at them and waves cheerfully. Streyka and Rettah headed back out to the main corridor to do a little window shopping.

"I saw that look," Keytar muttered as they headed out of the store and out to the halls to stroll casually along.

Darksong barely restrained a laugh as she replied in a poor semblance of innocence, "What look?"

He snorted, "Yeah, that look. I'm not gonna ask, I'm afraid you'd tell me."

Darksong just grinned and ambled along, taking in the sights curiously.

Rettah snickered quietly and took a look at the swords amusingly juxtaposed with the guns across the hall. "Tsk, touristy crap," Rettah said, "I bet half the people who buy their weapons here don't even actually intend to use them."

"But I bet they look spiffy on the walls!" Keytar replied brightly, "And you can point to them and tell all sorts of tall tales of 'back in the day'." He snickered.

Darksong just smirked and shook her head.

"I remember this hot item they were selling back during the War of Planar Dominance…" Rettah said. "The Super Duper Anti-Demon Ray 2000, or something ridiculous like that. The funny part was, it was completely ineffective against demons, just made them tickle a bit."

"Mm, I could see some potential in that," Darksong hmmed, grinning a bit, then chuckled, "Well, on the plus side, that might have given them a chance to run before their enemy ate them or something."

"The things at least got converted into a more useful purpose as a healing gun, which might have been less startling to some people if when they got hurt it didn't look like the person performing first aid on them was pulling out something looking like some bizarre squirt gun/laser blaster at them…"

"Hold still, damnit! I'm gonna heal you." Darksong pantomimed drawing a gun and moving it rapidly around to track an unseen 'victim', then gave it up with a throaty giggle. Keytar looked at her a bit oddly, wondering where the _real_ Darksong was, as this was clearly a podling.

They passed the jewelry store and came down by the aforementioned furniture store, with its sign proclaiming that its fur-repellant furniture was good for pet owners, were-creatures, and furries.

Rettah said, "I wonder which of those categories the person who came up with the thing fell under…"

"Could be two out of the three." Darksong grinned lightly. "Nothing wrong with having a pet."

Keytar snorted, 'okay, that was more like her', and headed in to take a look.

Rettah and Streyka trailed in after. The store had various sections for furniture with different enchantments on it, the fur-repellant, a general dirt-repellant, fire-resistant, and such. There were beds, chairs, sofas, and loveseats available in each type, with a sign proclaiming that colors and patterns could be changed free of charge with purchase.

Keytar chuckled. "Definitely have to get someone out this way to take a look at some of this, I'm sure the cubs'd go nuts over having furniture they could crawl around on."

Rettah snickered as she saw the sign to the next section, advertising fur-repellant _and_ regenerating furniture. 'Claw it all you want, it'll repair itself!' said the sign.

"Oh Gaia, now the felines'd go crazy gaga over that," Keytar snorted and rolled his eyes. "Or at least Malcolm would for not having to replace and repair the stuff all the time. Hmm."

Darksong looked around thoughtfully, transformed to her hybrid form and stretched out languidly on one of the couches to test it out. The furniture was serviceable and rather comfortable.

Rettah went over chuckling and poking at a cushion a bit. "No doubt," she said. "The Elkandu are nothing if not practical."

Darksong rolled over on her stomach, propping up on her elbows and glancing over at them, kicking her legs idly behind her. She grinned, then sighed and got back up, returning to her homid form. "So you going to order or just shopping for ideas, Key?"

Keytar thought about it, then snorted. "Better find out what and where, first, or at least point the place out to the people that'd be most interested."

Rettah snickered softly. "I'm sure they could probably do custom orders too, they generally do." She took a seat and proceeded to shift and test out the fur-repellant claims a bit.

Keytar walked over to watch, merely for observation value, naturally, keeping a keen eye out for any loose bits of shed fur that happened to cling… to the furniture. Right.

Darksong smirked and shook her head, crossed over to Streyka. "When was the last time you were out this way?"

Streyka said, "I don't remember. Probably a while… years? Decades? Meh. My best guess would be around three years ago during the Temporal Convergence."

Darksong folded her arms, glancing over with a grin. "Can't imagine that furniture shopping's high on your list of 'fun' things to do. What _do_ you do for fun, the few times a century you let yourself?"

"Um…" Streyka said, thinking. "I do a bit of painting from time to time. And sometimes I sing… And I like musicals… yeah…"

" _Another_ singer in our merry band?" Darksong grinned brightly. "All we need now is striped uniforms and a pole, we'd be a perfect barber shop quartet."

Rettah panted in an amused manner, wagging her tail.

Streyka chuckled. "Yeah, well, so all I do is sappy pop songs…"

Keytar laughed, at both of them, and reached out to scratch Rettah's ear as he said, "You mean there's some other kind of pop song?"

Darksong snickered. "Hmm, well, there's dance tunes, those aren't _too_ sappy."

Streyka said, "Although I suppose it's better than angsty metal, whiny country, and emo rap."

Darksong grinned. "I like her already, have to ask mom if I can keep her."

Keytar snickered and rolled his eyes. "Careful, start talking sense about music and she'll _really_ be a pain."

Streyka snickered.

Rettah bounced down off the couch and shifted back, and looked over the couch. "Yep, no fur there. Guess it works." She chuckled.

"Course the real test is when the fur flies," Keytar quirked a grin. "But I don't think they'd appreciate the test in the store." 

Rettah chuckled softly. "If we're not gonna get anything right now, shall we head out and do some more shopping?"

Streyka chuckled softly.

Keytar smirked. "Hey, don't look at me, I just helped ya kidnap Streyka here, it's you lot that chained me along on _this_ little venture."

Darksong smirked and lightly backhanded him in the stomach in passing. "Oh quit your whining, you're sounding like a lupus who finished his last Milk Bone."

He snickered, but they headed out to continue the idle exploration.

Streyka said, "Ah, everyone knows girls love to go shopping. Even butch dykes," she added, eyeing the nearby S&M shop with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, I noticed." Keytar smirked and rolled his eyes at Darksong, who promptly ignored him in favor of a very thoughtful look in the direction of that shop.

She grinned over at them. "Mmm, 'scuse me, I'm just going to… take a little look around." She strolled off in that direction.

Rettah and Streyka grinned a bit and headed off after her. The place was well-stocked with collars, whips, sex toys, accessories, skimpy leather outfits, mundane or with various enchantments of different sorts.

"Eh, porn shops, gotta love em." Keytar grinned, shrugged, and trailed after the three women… or two and a half, counting Darksong. She was not shy about taking a good long look around, poking into every obscure corner of the shop. Variety and inventiveness, two of her favorite things.

Streyka said, "I will refrain from suggesting that anyone here might need a dog collar." She grinned innocently.

Rettah just said, "Kinky."

"Already got mine," Darksong replied, grinning as she flicked at the spiked collar around her throat, then reached over to snag one from a shelf, "Could look good on _you_ , though."

Keytar really, really didn't want to know if she was just playing around or actually… he went to take a casual look around a little ways away.

Rettah looked at the ceiling, grinning innocently. Apparently one of the available enchantments was one in which the wearer couldn't remove it themselves, too. There were also some kinkier things like ones that could be set to administer mild to moderate pain too.

"Mm." Darksong just grinned and returned the normal collar to its place, thought about it for all of around two seconds and snagged one of the variable pain collars. Pleasure and pain were, in her experience, not so terribly different as some people believed, and she hummed cheerfully as she moved on to see what else could be found. So many things to play with… oh yes, she'd be coming back _here_.

Rettah was currently examining an adjustable spiked dildo, and after extending it to "horse-sized", she decided to put it away. Streyka was looking with some amusement at a tray of fake vampire fangs.

Darksong walked quietly up beside Streyka, took on the halfway form between homid and crinos, and grinned aside at her to display the fangs that went with her line. "I have my own," she said with a wink, then hummed a light tune as she turned to examine another display nearby.

Keytar, seeing Rettah's recent exposure, snickered, "For the 'lusting for Mr. Ed' crowd, eh?"

"I think I'll pass on that one," Rettah said. "I would like to think I'm a bit tighter than that." Streyka chuckled softly. The clerk tending the store today was apparently a human-looking woman with tattoos covering every inch of exposed flesh, and probably nearly every inch of non-exposed flesh too for that matter, and a good deal of flesh was being exposed.

Darksong didn't see anything else that just screamed out to be bought, though there were some, mm, _very_ interesting ideas to be had around here, and headed toward the counter. She stopped midway and strolled over to add a second similar collar to the deal, then ambled back to the counter. "Gut effening," she said in a shamelessly bad old-Transylvania accent, and grinned a bit.

The clerk rang up the collars while commenting, "You're not a vampire, you're a shapeshifter. And did anyone ever actually talk like that?"

Darksong laughed. "Only in the old horror movies, though there _was_ an accent that wasn't too far off in the eastern European area at one time." She paid for the collars without complaint, their uses turning a fascinating circle at the edges of thought.

"Will that be all? And would you like a bag for that, or are you just going to put them on your pets on the way out?" the clerk asked.

Darksong turned her eyes up in thought, then grinned. "That'll be all, and a bag would be fine, thanks."

The clark put them in a plastic bag with the receipt and handed it over.

Rettah just snickered a bit at that comment and said, "And just what are you planning on doing with those, hmm?" She grinned.

"Mm, not sure offhand, but I'll think of _something_ ," Darksong replied with bland innocence, tucking the bag into her new pocket. She really didn't think it'd do herself any good to carry them around where she could focus and obsess on the idea, she'd be looking to drag someone off in no time that way.

Keytar quirked a brow at the two of them, hmmed thoughtfully, and said not a word.

Down the way, they shortly encountered an electronics store, with televisions, stereos, cameras, phones, datapads, scanners, and stuff. At least it was some clear sign that the entire universe sans Suzcecoz hadn't been completely technophobic. Keytar did take that as a good sign, even if it was just one planet out of however many were running around here. Maybe with the Urquart horde doing their thing and Suzcecoz fixing the plumbing, they'd start to see more of this sort of thing on the way. Darksong doesn't pay it any particular mind, really, it's no different than a thousand other similar shops back home, and the Glass Walkers were even worse.

Then, along beyond that, there was apparently a "baby store", advertising self-changing diapers, the bottle of infinite milk, and a magic cap that teaches them how to walk, talk, and use the toilet! Darksong barely noticed the baby store, her eyes glazing right past and a hand dropping idly into her pocket and digging around until she found one of the collars. She drew it out and ran her thumb lightly over it, thoughts clearly elsewhere. Keytar paid it a little more attention, enough to point out the prominently-displayed cap with a snicker. Rettah snickered at it for a moment and her eyes then meandered over toward Darksong with a grin.

Streyka said, "Geez, make it a baby bottle full of blood and I might be interested." She meandered on past, heading up the stairs. At the top of the stairs they saw a tea shop, a store selling stationery and writing utensils, a musical instrument shop, a first aid station, and such.

"Looks like we hit the service center." Keytar smirked, looking around, then wandered over toward the instrument shop to take a look around. His own equipment was built in, for the most part, but it never hurt to keep an eye out.

Darksong followed idly after, humming softly. Rettah and Streyka tagged along with mild curiostity. The shop offered a few magical instruments amongst the mundane ones. For the most part ones intended to enhance a performance, but some with more esoteric enchantments, such as a flute guarenteed to charm snakes, and a horn that could shatter rock. Keytar chuckled at some of the more exotic pieces, shaking his head in amusement, and ambled relatively quickly through. If there was one thing he knew, it was the tools of his own trade, and he was not really seeing anything there that would fit into it. Darksong idly strolled through the aisles and glanced over displays, but she was still distracted, and nearly bumped into him at a crossing.

"Hey, what's _up_ with you?" he asked.

"Nothing." She smirked and headed back toward the entry.

Down the corridor, they came across the brothel, a naked succubus standing outside making seductive poses at passersby. Rettah coughed a bit when she saw it.

"Hey look Darksong, your kinda woman," Keytar tossed out, grinning, "Y'kmow, the whole 'soul-draining bitch from hell' thing."

Oh, if looks could kill…

He winced, "Hey, just kiddin', really." He backed away, holding his hands up, and muttered, "Sheesh."

Darksong just snorted lightly at him and looked away, tip of her tongue darting to her lips as she took an appreciative view of the demon. Rettah looked over the succubus, who, noting their interest, grinned at them and posed, flicking her tail and running her claws down her body lightly. Keytar, out of immediate danger now with Darksong's ire re-directed, smirked and folded his arms, glanced over at Streyka and rolled his eyes. Darksong mmmed, thought about it, and glanced over at Rettah with a lightly grinning question.

Streyka commented, "Yes, apparently, you _can_ buy anything here."

Rettah said, "Hmm, well, yeah, they're fun and all, but then you can also get private rooms down at the hotel across the arch-bridge a little ways from here too…"

The succubus said, "We also offer incubi, satyrs, nymphs, humans, vampires, and halflings, too."

Streyka just said flatly, "Halflings. Okay then."

"Halflings, mmmmrighty then." Keytar smirked, shook his head, "Shall we move on? Unless our friend here has an interest in a night out of that kind, be kinda rude, dontcha think?" he directed pointedly at Darksong.

Darksong just smirked, sighed inwardly, and almost purred at the succubus, "Maybe another time."

The succubus grinned at her, flicked her tail playfully, and went to try to seduce another passerby. Rettah snickered and headed off down the corridor down past the shop selling flying broomsticks and carpets.

Keytar sidled over to stroll next to Darksong and muttered with a smirk, "There ya go, always chasing tail again."

She snorted lightly and answered equally quietly, "You're a fine one to talk."

He chuckled and decided to refrain from a broomstick comment, any one of a half-dozen he could make on it.

Rettah glanced toward the shop and said, "You know, I don't know about you, but I'd really prefer to fly in something … well, metallic. Or with actual wings at least. I'd always think I was going to fall off one of those brooms."

Keytar couldn't resist, and grew a set of metallic wings with a grin. "Hey babe, wanna ride?"

Darksong looked at him with a little surprise, then snickered and shook her head. Rettah giggled softly and refrained from making a comment about wooden rods, and looked down to the rest of the shops stretching.

Darksong moved over to walk next to Streyka, smiling faintly. "You're right, our minds have gone totally to the gutter, probably a good time to end the night…" The smile twisted to a quirky grin. "Unless you'd rather not. Could let those two run off for a while and look at other things…"

Keytar's eye twitchef as he caught part of that, guessed the question was answered. Eek.

Streyka giggled softly, and commented, "Mmm, no doubt. Right into the gutter, down into the river, and out to sea, really."

"So is that a no?" Darksong grinned lightly. "I've got new toys I'm just itching to play with, but…" She shrugged faintly. "I'm not going to club you over the head on this one."

"Welll, I'm sure I wouldn't mind overmuch," Streyka said, grinning innocently.

Darksong's grin broadened just a little more and she looked past at Keytar and Rettah, and winked. "I'll catch up with you all a bit later."

Keytar just smiled and nodded, then turned his head away so he could make a face… a leech. That was just… yesh.

Darksong didn't seem bothered though as she grabbed Streyka's arm. "Let's blow this joint."

Streyka grinned and headed off with her.

Rettah just chuckled softly and said, "Well. Um. Wanna go off and fuck?"

"Does the idea of making out with a leech make me queasy?" Keytar grinned. "Hell yeah! Where was this hotel you were talkin' about?"

Rettah grinned and headed off down to the south of the mall across an arch bridge over a street, and went to check in for a night of a little fun.


	3. Fox Crossing

It had surely been an entertaining past couple of months, but Morin was about ready to head back to Torn Elkandu. It was a nice place and all, or something like that, but he hated staying in the same place for too long at a time.

Fantasia had enjoyed the last few months, without a doubt, life was ever an interesting thing full of toys to be played with. There were certain small disadvantages to being back home that had started to wear thin, though, like her adopted family and its silly organizational demands. She loved the GWs, loved being part of the tribe, but they really had this thing about a place for everyone and everyone in their place sometimes. Sheesh.

Were she in foxish form when Morin idly mentioned the idea, her ears would have perked and tails gone into a frenzy of excited motion at the prospect… as it was, she just grinned broadly and bounced a bit. "Sure!"

Morin grinned. "Hey, there's lots of the universe left to see after all. I wonder where Goldentail got off to, though?" A crazy man, certainly, to not only hang around one fox, but to actually wonder about another one too…

Fae, 'cats, Fae cats, Goldentail had been given the full runabout with her new friends, and gotten to see more of the city and the surrounding spirit world than most. She'd been out to the Sept of Dreams, over to meet the Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers, run across the Rokea, meandered around the Mokole… all in all, she'd managed to keep busy, but she'd still only a phonecall away for a resourceful Kitsune.

Fantasia grinned and dashed off for her upgraded computer, reconfigured it to its communication mode, "Let's find out." she said, and put a call out to a few friends who could track the golden fox down. One was enough for most people, but two running together were entirely _too_ foxy!

Morin would also wonder where Thorn and Shenzel had gotten off to, but he knew perfectly well where they'd gone and hadn't moved for some time and figured they could take care of themselves. The foxes, however, were cute and all. Yeah, that was it.

It paid to have contacts in a city, proof of that being that Goldentail ended up with a message that she's being looked for in a whopping fifteen minutes or so… not like she'd been keeping a low profile or anything, and it would have taken even less time if she hadn't gotten dragged off into some remote corner of the Den Realm in pursuit of a very elusive and taunting spirit.

Fantasia spent the time waiting darting around the penthouse, digging through this, that, and the other thing and occasionally stuffing something new into her backpack. Never know what might come in handy somewhere along the way!

"Am I forgetting anything?" Fantasia wondered, looking around. Laptop, check. Upgrades and checkup, check. Family visits, check. Various and sundry, check. She grinned brightly over at Morin. "Looks like we're good to go when Goldy shows up and you're ready, hero."

Morin grinned and said, "Hey, I'm ready anytime. I always keep everything I might need in my pockets, ready to sail off into the wild black and blue yonder…"

Fantasia snickered and pranced over to throw her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek. "You're male, your concept of what's useful and needed doesn't change nearly as often, silly."

Besides, as a fox, one had to be ready for _any_ circumstance, and with her imagination she could conceive of some truly bizarre ones… who says that they might not end up pursued by killer bees sometime? Considering some of their typical activities, that was possible and even likely in some circumstances. Sometime or another, Goldentail manages to get back, bouncing around eagerly and babbling about where she's been lately. Goldentail was only mildly disappointed and soon enough eagerly made to hop back over that way and meet up with them. She'd certainly seen plenty of interesting things of late!

Fantasia was more than happy to be reunited and chatter cheerfully away about the things they'd been up to in the meantime, they'd ended up seeing many similar things from a different perspective, including the Sept where she'd left Jezzy-poonum-bear's necklace as a gift for Gideon. That'd gotten the stuffy old Fang's attention right off and made him _very_ happy. After a few minutes, she breaks off and grins over at Morin.

"Errrright, we were planning on heading back to Torn Elkandu, weren't we?" Fantasia said.

"Ooh!" Goldentail said, bouncing around happily. "Okay!"

Morin giggled softly, and just helpfully Recalled the three of them back to the Nexus of Torn Elkandu.

Fantasia stretched grandly and drew in a deep savoring breath of the air as they arrived, then looked around with a brightly-anticipating grin. That look is one sure to make Sept-leaders cringe, the expression of a Ragabash gazing around at all the shiny toys to be played with, adventures to be had, and trouble to get into.

"Say, I'm hungry," Goldentail said, prancing down along the street toward the Crux cheerfully, and no doubt startling its current patrons at seeing a three-tailed golden kitsune streak through, weaving around the tables and heading straight to the bar.

Rettah just kind of blinked and paused to stare mid-bite.

"Say, that's not a bad idea," Fantasia hmmed, grinned, and darted off after. Sugar was always welcome, and there might be something interesting there or someone equally-interesting to tortu…errr play with! She skidded to a halt inside, took a look around for an empty table, then just _grins_ as she saw someone familiar there and headed for Rettah and Keytar's table to drag out a chair, plop into it, and ask, "Mind if I join you?"

Rettah just said, "Um. You already did."

Morin trailed along behind her at a jog and comes up to take a seat as well, and naturally Goldentail came back with an armload of edible delights, spotted where they went and headed over to that table as well.

Keytar looked up, a burger halfway to his mouth, then dropped it, torn between grinning and going 'Aw shit!'. He settled for a smirk and a nod. "Hiya Fantasia, how's tricks?"

Fantasia grinned. "Very foxy, as always. Oh, this is Morin, and the golden wonder is Goldentail."

"Hi!" Goldentail said brightly, arranging a number of food items around the table. Half of them appeared to be desserts, too. She proceeded to dig into a roast beef sandwich herself.

Morin waved and said lightly, "Hi, I'm the sane one. Relatively speaking." He grinned playfully.

Keytar looked at the three, the sight of _two_ foxes damn near enough to make him bolt, then smirked at Morin, "Sane one? Gotta question that with the company ya keep, or did they promise not to torment you too much if you didn't try to escape."

Fantasia giggled and swiped one of Goldy's confectionery choices, "Oh it's not as bad as all _that_."

"Well, hence the 'relatively speaking' bit," Morin said, winking and borrowing a sandwich himself to munch on.

Goldentail stopped to ramble about what all she had been up to some more excitedly.

Keytar looked sour as he went back to cautiously eating, watching out of the corner of his eye to make sure the Ragabash don't do anything _too_ funky.

Fantasia turned an ear to listening to Goldy, grinned over at Rettah. "And since _someone_ forgot, who're you?"

At the center of the table, meanwhile, a salt and pepper shaker sparked into existence and start playing a game of Spy vs. Spy, using various 'landmarks' as cover.

Rettah said, "My name is Rettah Eiram. You might've seen me at the last competition. I would be the werewolf who got toasted by the fire demons repeatedly."

"Ohhhhhh yeah! I remember now," Fantasia laughed, "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to play with fire?"

The salt dashed over to hide behind Keytar's beer, poking its head out to look for any sign of the dreaded Dr. Pepper. Unbeknownst to poor Sir Salt, the fiend had crept around the other side and is even now sneaking up on him. "I have you now, Salt!" came a small voice, as pepper leaned over to launch a black cloud that caused the white defender to sneeze uncontrollably. Goldentail giggled in amusement at the display, clapping her paws together in between bites of her sandwich.

Rettah smirked faintly, well enough used to the antics of the Elkandu around here at least, and said, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Villain! Fiend! Cur! Spice of ill taste!" Sir Salt replied, coughing, "But you will not prevail, Dr. Pepper, for I will destroy you and salt the very earth where you fall!" It proceeded to drown the vile shaker in a mountain of white.

Fantasia paid no attention to it, and snickered at Rettah's reply, taking a bite of sugar. "Mm, that's where the best fun seems to come from. Not foxy at all to plot everything and think it all through!"

Keytar glared at the show, and just rolled his eyes… then had to snicker as he took a sip of his beer, depriving the dueling 'seasonal actors' of their shelter.

Rettah said, "Never seems to be a shortage of entertainment around here, either. Or insane metamorphs," she added with a faint smirk directed at nobody in particular.

"Hey! _I'm_ not insane!" Keytar protested.

Fantasia snickered, then blinked and asked, "Waitasec, when did _you_ go all floof-morphy anyway?"

He smirked. "Gadget's been dying to test out the goop he apparently got from _you_ , didn't know about _that_ little detail before I agreed, though."

She grinned "Oh boy, he got it _working_!" and glanced at Rettah playfully, "And for the record, I'm not crazy, just foxish."

Rettah chuckled softly. "Yeah, he was trying to test it on me, too, but I passed on that and just went for some neural implants instead." She went back to munching on her food, and thought it tasted a bit salty.

"Spoilsport," Fantasia teased, "You don't know the fun you're missing! Being able to shapeshift into anything you can dream of is _very_ foxy, let's you do all sorts of fascinating things."

"Yeah, I'm sure it is," Rettah said, grinning faintly. "I'd just really, well, rather not. Although if for some reason I find myself really wishing to, at least I'd know where to go…"

"Wouldn't put it off _too_ long," Fantasia grins, "Pretty soon _everyone's_ gonna want to be one, then you'd be just another face in a blobby crowd rather than one of the pioneers who got it rolling!" she snickered, "Besides, Gadget might get wise to just how _much_ 'fun' can be had with it and discontinue the thing out of sheer self-defense."

"You know, you're not being very tempting here," Rettah said with a smirk. "No, no, I'm perfectly happy being just another werewolf, thanks."

Fantasia chuckled and dug into her sugar supply for a minute, humming a soft, sweet melody to herself.

Keytar smirked. "I wonder how long it'll be til he _does_ do just that, especially with the tribe bein' run by Ragabash. I wouldn't let one of 'em near that stuff!"

"I would think there's a good reason why there aren't many of them running around at the moment," Rettah commented. "Just one of those things that can have really weird effects sometimes…"

"For example, take a Ragabash, or someone equally crazy," Keytar grinned, "Add in a dash of metamorph, and you've got a potential for untold havoc and destruction to be unleashed." He looked down as the pepper shaker hacked, wheezed, and fell over dead from its fatal wounds that salt rubbed in… then got up and does a dramatic death scene again a moment later before falling dead again. He quirked a brow and waited…

Rettah said, "Although, I'm not too sure how Streyka and Angelita were metamorphs before and aren't now for some reason… Although a lot of weird crap happened during and after the Temporal Convergence, people ended up with multiple memories, it was very confusing… Though I suppose it stands to reason it happened for about the same reason that I'm not possessed anymore either."

"Because Shazmar decided it that way, naturally," Fantasia replied, grinning a bit, "C'mon, how fun would it be to do something like that? Let the world go all wonky, then piece it all back together into a new puzzle shape _and_ leave people without the instruction manual… that'd be endless entertainment!"

"He does that from time to time," Rettah said dryly. "He just seems to get bored or something and does random things to the universe. It's very disorienting at times. This Interdimensional Bridge bit being the latest thing… Sure, the Elkandu generally could visit other universes, but more usually than not, people from there couldn't come back _here_ so easily…"

"Tsk, how dull and boring _that_ had to be," Fantasia replied, "Imagine all the new people that wouldn't get to enjoy the shininess around here." She sniffles and looks sad at the idea of it, then grins and waggles her brows, "Now you can have a fox on every corner, how great is _that_?" Keytar smirks and rolls his eyes. She might be one hell of a performer, but still flaky as hell.

Goldentail finished stuffing her snout and clapped her paws together cheerfully. "Oh, yes, it'll be lots of fun," she said.

Rettah looked to Keytar and said, "Hey, say, I don't think you've finished showing me around your universe yet. What was this Atrocity Realm you mentioned?"

"True, I," Keytar began, then caught the end of that, "Oh _hell_ no I'm not gonna show you _that_! Gah! You thought the Battlefield was bad? That's got _nothin'_ on Atrocity."

Fantasia makes a face and nods, "That is very definitely _not_ a foxy place, even to visit, and it really sucks how you have to get _out_."

Rettah laughed softly and said, "Need a new sarcasm detector installed, clearly." She winked. "Going to have to see Gadget about that."

Keytar shuddered deliberately, "Hey, don't even joke about that. I got stuck there _once_ and I sure as hell don't ever want to go back there. They don't call it the Atrocity Realm for nothin', babe, and the worst things that man has done to man or otherwise are that place's bread and butter. Only way out is to end up dead in some really gruesome fashion… remember your clause?" he smirked, "You could toss it right out the window."

"Heh, sorry, don't worry, I'm not that eager to see the place," Rettah said, snickering.

Goldentail proceeded to munch on a cherry pastry cheerfully.

"Legendary Realm's much more interesting," Fantasia chipped in brightly, "Provided you don't mind doing a little questing along the way. You can also have _oodles_ of fun in the Celestial Realm if you can sneak in unnoticed," she grinned.

"'Course, there's also plenty of interesting places in _this_ universe we haven't seen yet either for that matter…" Rettah said. "There's stuff around here even I haven't seen, really… I must admit, I have never seen the bottom of the Abyss," she adds brightly.

Fantasia snickered as Keytar snorted. "Uh-huh, right, and if it's anything like the one back home you can just send a postcard. Like there's not enough insanity to be found right in Torn Elkandu?" he smirks and looks pointedly in the direction of their guests.

Rettah smiled innocently. "Oh, fine, fine, I'll quit joking around already. Let's visit the Valley of Gal instead," she said in such a tone that she clearly didn't think that place was much better.

Keytar just looked at her suspiciously, but Fantasia either missed the cue or doesn't pay it any attention as she asked brightly, "So what's the Valley of Gal?"

"It's on Lezaria," Rettah said. "After Sardill started going around killing all the wizards and sucking their souls out, many of the survivors came to Gal, also known as Daggervale, and built a refuge there…"

Fantasia perked noticeably at that, "A townful of mages? Oh, that could be _very_ fun," she grinned. "Besides, magic is very, very foxy, there's not telling what might be found in a place like that!"

"Elves and gnomes, primarily," Rettah said, getting the sinking feeling a bit that they're going to be getting a pair of foxes tagging along no matter where they went and vaguely considering the Abyss.

Keytar eyed the exuberant reply suspiciously, the glitter of the fox's eyes worrying him a great deal, and looked over at Rettah, "So, you were sayin' something about the Abyss?" he asked lightly, clearly not thinking as badly of the idea now. It'd be a lot less chaotic and hellish, that's for damn sure!

Fantasia smirked and looked over at Goldy, then Morin, "Anyone up for a little fieldtrip?"

Goldentail said, "Ooh, it sounds positively delightful!" She bounced around, wiggling her tails and spinning around excitedly, almost knocking something over. Morin said, "Sure, why not?"

"You two have fun," Fantasia directed toward Rettah and Keytar as she hopped up, grinning, "Maybe we'll catch up with you after our little adventure." She waved cheerfully and headed for the door, letting her tails hang out and curl around energetically. Keytar waited til they turn away, then muttered to Rettah, "Y'know, the Abyss might not be such a bad vacation spot for a while," he smirked.

Rettah was torn, as she actually _had_ wanted to visit the Valley of Gal, and sighed. "Uh, yeeeah," she said. "Or how about that one place Jenna mentioned, the Pattern Realm?"

"Couldn't be _any_ worse than going along with a couple foxes and someone crazy enough to hang out with em," Keytar replied, "Don't get me wrong, got a hell of a lot of respect for what I've seen of the old Silverfall recordings, but I _swear_ they musta kept her on a leash or somethin'!"

Rettah snickered softly and climbed to her feet, saying, "Mmh, no kidding." Perhaps they would amuse themselves with the gnomes and their frequently-explosive contraptions a bit. She headed out toward the Nexus to see about looking up coordinates for this Pattern Realm place.

They encountered the rambunctious crew near the Nexus, the two foxes chattering as they looked over charts and decide just where this Valley might be and occasionally getting distracted as something else caught their eye. Probably going to be a while deciding. Keytar smirked, either that or they'd pick at a whim and dash off to demolish their destination. Gah.

"Let's get outta here, quick," Keytar murmured in an aside to Rettah.


	4. Wilds of Great Deeds

Rettah located the proper coordinates in due order and activated the Nexus to send them to the world designated the Pattern Realm. They materialized in a forest of perfectly symmetrical trees, all identical, near what appeared to be a city towering into the sky and surrounded by some sort of bubble.

Keytar took a curious look around, hmmed, "I can see where this'd get on some people's nerves, but…" he shrugged.

"Well, she was right about the trees apparently," Rettah said with a smirk, heading off toward the city.

It was a tall cluster of buildings built very close together, many parts of it seeming to defy gravity with angular glass and steel, although the lack of real streets seemed not much of a problem as they could spot several flying objects darting around the city.

"At least it doesn't look like the Scar," Keytar mused, trotting easily along aside her.

"The what?" Rettah asked as she headed in toward the city.

The air outside was pure enough, but when they crossed in through the atmosphere shield, it seemed almost chokingly perfect. They got some odd looks from the city's inhabitants, blue-eyed, blond elves.

Keytar coughed lightly, then replied, "The Scar, ugly little realm that's the worst aspects of tech in all their glory. Y'know, fun stuff like factories belching out clouds of pollution, people working in slave labor conditions, all the fun stuff."

"Your universe has all kinds of cheerful places," she said dryly, looking over the elves. "And this place looks like some sort of Nazi paradise or something."

Perhaps not immediately apparent until they tried it, but neither of them would be able to change form within this city. That was something Keytar had considered, actually, grinning at the odd looks and going to change to emulate their appearance, then frowning faintly as he found it wasn't possible.

"Not _that's_ interesting," Keytar muttered, "And not real good either." He didn't like not being able to shapeshift, it limited options way too much.

Rettah raises an eyebrow and said, "What is it? Something wrong?" She glanced over toward him.

"Was going to tweak an elf's nose or two," Keytar replied, trying again without any success, "But I can't shapeshift…" he glanced over at her, "How about you?" There were Realms where that was true, too, but he didn't exactly like going to _them_ either.

Rettah tries, and nothing happened, and she shook her head. "Nope, no doin'. Weird. Well, they don't seem instantly aggressive or anything at least…"

"Yeah, and appearances can be deceivin' too," Keytar muttered, "I don't like it. Last thing we need is to end up in some freaky variation on Wolfhome."

"Wolfhome?" Rettah says, quirking an eyebrow as she headed in a bit further. It appeared to be, interestingly, a sort of city one might expect of the 21st or 22nd century.

Keytar smirked, clearly uneasy as he replied with a nod, "Yeah, nasty little sub-Realm where you go in and get stuck in wolf shape for the duration of your visit. That visit can be a hell of a long one, depending, since the rules for getting out are different each time, basically you have to figure out _what_ you're doing there and accomplish a task. Only thing is, no Gifts, no shapeshifting, and the humans hunt wolves."

"Well, that doesn't sound particularly fun," Rettah said. "I'll reiterate what I said about all the cheerful places in your home." She glanced over toward him and said, "Uh, are you sure it didn't work? Because your ears are getting pointy."

"Huh?" Keytar stopped, blinked as he reaches up to check for himself, "Well that's just damned weird, I didn't get a single hint that things were goin' like they should, so what's up with _that_?" Slowly, little by little, it did seem to be changing him, molding him, although Rettah didn't seem to be affected.

"That's odd… Maybe because you're a metamorph so you're basically just sentient Silly Putty anyway?"

Keytar snickered, "Gee thanks, babe, nice way of puttin' it… but, maybe. Could be it's a little stronger than the average shapeshifting, so it's possible to slowly break past what's holding this place together. _Still_ don't like it, though."

"No idea. Doesn't seem to be such a bad place overall though at least," Rettah said, looking around a bit.

A flying car landed nearby and let some people out, who filed into a nearby building.

"Still makes me nervous," Keytar replied, though he had to admit that it didn't look like too bad a place he didn't like the idea of getting caught without part of his usual run of abilities… like running around after losing a leg and not having a prosthetic, just damned awkward.

"Hmm, either way, gonna need to pick up some wheels, or wings as they case may be," she said, looking about and up toward the towering buildings.

"Or just say no," Keytar smirked, "Seriously, this bugs the hell out of me. No tellin' if regeneration would even work here if something went wrong."

"Okay, okay," Rettah said, getting the hint and heading away from the city.

One they cross out of the atmosphere dome again, an almost imperceptible tension they hadn't really noticed was there seems to ease up, and he could feel his form oozing back into the place he had set it before slowly.

"Uh-uh, I _really_ don't like that, they can keep it," Keytar smirked, turns an apologetic grin her way, "Sorry babe, it just…" He shrugged, "Feels wrong to have that goin' on."

"Weird place," Rettah said. She attempted to shift outside here just to see if she could, and managed it, with considerably more effort than normal, then changed back. "Hmm. Okay, so she did mention two other areas around here, Kelen Tarnos and Taike, perhaps they'll be a bit less, um, funky."

"Worth a shot," Keytar said, shaking himself to get rid of the last vestiges of the metaphysical 'weight' of the place, "Though if it's as extreme as that, may not be such a great place to visit either."

Rettah proceeded to recall and look up the coordinates of this "Kelen Tarnos" place, as that sounded like the least fucked up of them. "Not a wonder Jenna was creeped out about it," Rettah commented.

"Have to point it out to Salara sometime," Keytar mused, "She'd probably like it there," he smirked, then snickered, "Be funny to send Darksong out that way, too."

Rettah snickered softly and activated the Nexus again. The place they ended up in, the sky was a deep purple rather than the clear and perfect blue of the city of Seka, but the trees were pretty normal looking, if slightly more gnarled than usual, and there wesn't anything seeming to immediately press in upon them from here. A road led off nearby toward a town some ways away.

"Little rustic looking, but not a bad place for a run," Keytar said, looking around, then grinned at her and shifted down to Hispo, the halfway form between the warform and wolf, most resembling a dire wolf. He glanced at her challengingly and lowered his chest to the ground, as though ready to run…

Rettah chuckled softly and said, "Ah, it doesn't look _that_ far away… Hmm, just a mile or two maybe…" She shrugged and grinned, and shifts form herself with some amusement. Much preferable to be able to do it, as interesting as that last place looked.

Keytar laughed wolfishly and took off at a sprint, it's not like the form hadn't been built for speed and endurance anyway. Rettah took off after him cheerfully. The road cut smoothly through the Wilds of Great Deeds, the starless violet sky stretching above them as they went. The town came up into sight shortly enough, a rustic enough place populated by a much greater variety than seen back in Seka, with blond, black, brown, and red hair, and the full range of eye colors.

Keytar skidded to a halt just outside of town, not wanting to go tearing through like a freight train and sending the natives scattering like bowling pins, and returned to his normal form, laughing deeply.

Rettah came up behind and stopped and changed form as well, laughing and saying, "Ah, you beat me. Hmm, not too bad a looking place at first glance eh?"

"Only if asked nicely," Keytar quipped with a grin, then turned to look at the town and stroll onward, "Yeah, it does look a little more… relaxed. No signs of Wyld storms or some other equivalent either, that's a good thing."

Rettah chuckled and headed in along with him. The people looked more curious by them rather than giving them odd stares, perhaps they were more used to dealing with outsiders and more welcoming of them here. One young one pranced along after them, having spotted them approach from the edge of town, chanting, "Tolvurga! Tolvurga!"

"There's one in every town," Keytar muttered in an aside to Rettah, and smirked as he stopped to confront their pest, "Hey there, friend, what's up with the chanting, ya lose your tribal drummer or somethin'?"

The kid giggled and said, "No, no, you're Tolvurga aren't you? I saw you running in down the road all furry like wolves! Like the Tolvurga!" He bounced around excitedly.

Keytar chuckled, "Uh yeah, we're shapeshifters, but what's a Tolvurga?" Some local variant, he supposed, but ya never knew if the peasants had silver pitchforks waiting…

"The Wolflords," said the child. "They're tall and furry and smart and friendly… but we haven't seen em in months, ever since the Pattern-Breaker built that Wheel and things got all weird and then got not-weird-anymore again…"

"Haven't seen em in months, huh?" Keytar glanced aside at Rettah, it sounded like the local shapeshifter population was not only in good graces but maybe lost… then back to the kid, "Any idea where they might have gone? Or do they usually disappear now and again?"

"Nope," he said. "They've been around forever and ever, longer than we been here. But they marched off into the fields of Chaos when the Pattern-Breaker came and we never saw them since…" He looked saddened by that.

Keytar chuckled lightly, "Hey, chin up kid, us furballs are tough to get rid of, I'm sure they're fine. Maybe something to look into, though."

The boy looked up brightly. "Oh, would you? I miss playing with the cubs, they're fun and fuzzy! And they're all real smart and nice!" He bounced around cheerfully. "You'll bring back the Tolvurga?"

At least the kid had good taste, Keytar grinned, "I think that's definitely somethin' we can look into. So where were these fields of Chaos anyway?"

"Out past the Edge of the World, to the west and north," the child said, gesturing vaguely. "The Great Tolvurga was leading them off away, he's big and strong and smart and wise…"

Keytar laughed, "Okay, okay, we got the smart and wise bit, good indication that things'll be alright, right? Someone like that isn't just gonna vanish into thin air, probably just got busy with somethin' along the way. We'll go see."

"Chaos is a bad, bad place though, maybe they got stuck and couldn't come back…" the boy said, frowning. "But you'll get them out, I'm sure!" He bounced around and cheerfully prances down the road, proclaiming that the saviors of the Tolvurga had arrived.

"Cheerful little blighter," Keytar remarked, grinned a bit, "Well it looks like we got us a mystery to solve, Scoob. Ready to warm up the Mystery Machine?"

Rettah chuckled softly and said, "Sounds like a plan to me. Fields of Chaos, sounds like a prime vacation spot huh." She headed out for the edge of the town again in the general direction the child had indicated.

"Remind me to bug Salara or Gizmo about somethin' next time they're around," Keytar said as they make their way out, "Had an idea that would make gettin' around a little more interestin', but need to get a professional opinion."

Rettah chuckled softly. "Well, it didn't sound like it was too awful _far_ from here, maybe… I dunno…"

"Seems like a nice enough day for a run." Keytar grinned. "We'll just have to find out who's better at chasing whose tail." He waggled his brows, then shifted down to standard wolf form, scruffy-looking though it might be as a Glass Walker and he hadn't thought of changing appearances yet.

Rettah giggled softly and followed suit, wagging her tail playfully and trotting off into the forest at a brisk pace. Slowly, so slowly they didn't even at first notice it, the trees around them became more and more twisted and warped the further west they traveled, and the cloudy purple and black of the sky grew brighter with streaks and patches of swirling random colors.

City life might be more his thing, but Keytar had grown up in Selenis where every dog one of the Glass Walkers was thrown out to the caern in the mountains on a regular basis and forced to at least get familiar with nature. He'd taken to it pretty well, overall, so the outing wasn't too bad… besides, the way his company's tail wagged. Aroo!

The Edge of the World was clearly defined in some parts of this world, but in Kelen Tarnos, it just kind of slowly shifted on from relative normality into pure chaos. Eventually even the warped parodies of trees gave way into an open field of bizarre rock formations, the occasional tree jutting into the sky like twisted claws, and the sky a storm of violent color overhead. The landscape change was eventually enough to fully snare his attention, and Keytar turned his senses outward to keep watchful and wary for anything that might decide they looked like lunch. He slowed down, shaving away part of his attention to look for any traces of the missing werewolves

After a few moments of searching, he found a trail leading off into the fields of Chaos, at first looking to be a rough dirt path but very clearly a trail. Nothing in sight appeared likely to bother them at the moment. Keytar followed it, tail wagging slowly as his nose dipped to sniff along for further clues. They'd come through here, but how far they'd managed to get was anybody's guess. The trail led on, leading them through a strange and chaotic realm, and Rettah kept close pace with him. Down through valleys and around giant rock formations, the landscape only continued to grow more bizarre. Waterfalls flowing upward, melting clocks, eyeballs hovering in the air, islands floating in the sky with twisted trees growing down off them…

"This place is reminding more and more of the bizarre aspects of the Abyss," he growled, the thought bringing a heightened vigilance as he continued following the trail on through the twisted landscape.

"Well, at least nothing is trying to attack us… yet…" Rettah commented. A school of fish floated past them in the air. "This place reminds me of… Pandemonium… Which could be a bad thing, as Pandemonium is notoriously difficult to get out of…"

"Err, maybe that's why they got stuck?" Keytar wondered, turning a nervous eye on the oddities around them, then shrugged mentally, "Deal with getting out on the other side, have to find what happened to em first."

The trail broke off suddenly at the edge of a cliff leading down into a misty void, around twenty feet across to another broken bit of land where it seemed to continue. The landscape here seemed to be constantly shifting. Keytar snorted in amusement as he returned to homid form, the limitations of the original shapeshifting something very apparent at the moment. He would have been stuck leaping across that before, as it was… he re-grew the set of metallic wings he'd played with the night before, and added a little booster to them.

He turned to her with a grin, "Ready for that ride, babe?"

Rettah shifted as well, grinning and climbing aboard. "I'd say something innuendo-ish at the moment, but I can't decide which one to say."

Keytar wrapped his arms around her, groped with a playful grin, then said, "Hang on," just before leaping into the air.

The small jets fired to give him lift, but only for a second or two, then cut off to soar across the crevasse. Writhing tentacles coil around beneath them, one of them coming close enough to try to wrap itself around Rettah's ankle. She jerked away from it, and a sudden updraft took them out of reach to where they landed safely on the far side.

"Little too close to tentacle porn there, and not in a good way." Keytar glanced back toward the pit, then grins back at her, kissed her lightly, and let go as he dismisses the wings.

The trail continued on clearly on the other side, along a narrow cliffside including some precarious-looking stone arches. Any number of unpleasant-looking beasties appear to be waiting below, tentacles and eyeballs staring up at them.

"Humm, think I'll keep those wings for a while, just in case," Keytar commented, _very_ carefully making his way along and not looking down too much. "Delightful place, really, where all the Japanese schoolgirls should take their vacations," he smirked.

Further on, the trail brought them right near something very large, hairy, dark, and snoring like a chainsaw. It looked like a gigantic mutated woolly mammoth with six legs and four tusks. Keytar put a finger to his lips in a quieting gesture and goes to see about sneaking past the… whatever it is. He was _not_ a Flintstone to be wanting a mammoth burger.

Rettah crept past, and the beast snorted and stirred a bit as they go past. Rettah froze and stared at the thing. She didn't really care at the moment that wolves were supposed to be predators and elephants or whatever it was were herbivores… it was a lot _bigger_ herbivore than her, and she wasn't even damned sure if, in this screwed up place, it didn't eat the souls of babies or something. There wasn't even a guarantee that the thing _was_ a herbivore, weird things could happen when you got into the Umbra, and if this wasn't some really screwed up part of it Keytar would eat his wings without salt. He gently urged her on so they could get well away and return to tracking their wayward wolves.

They managed to get past without waking the creature, which rolled over and went back to sleep again thankfully. Rettah breathed a sigh of relief once they were out of sight of it. "Don't know what that thing was," she murmured. "Don't care to find out either."

Keytar nodded and quietly agreed,"There's times when it pays to just look the other way, and I don't really wanna find out if big and ugly back there really _is_ a herbivore or not."

The path led down toward a wide, rippling pool of water, and across a narrow stone bridge leading out to an island that can be seen floating in the water in the distance. It looked as though there were figures moving on the island.

"May as well have a little fun with this," Keytar grinned and pointed out toward the island, "See over there, how about taking a closer look?" He shapeshifted to a set of image-enhancing binoculars with little wings, darted up to circle around her head and then came to a hover in front of her.

Rettah chuckled softly and peered out through them across to the island. "Well, they definitely look fuzzy and wolfish to me. I think we've found them."

Okay, so the little weirdo Azale had proven useful in that regard at least, and Keytar darted away to return to his normal form, grinning. "Mm, let's see if we can't find a way over there, shall we?"

The stone bridge came to an abrupt stop around midway across the lake, and started again a good ways from there.

Rettah peered into the water, and said, "I'm not sure what those fish are, but knowing our luck they're probably piranhas."

"Or worse," Keytar agreed with a smirk and readied the wings again, "Gee Dubya Express, at your service!"

He held out an arm to her and got ready to boost them over that way. She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. The fish, which looked to be basically nothing but sharp teeth with fins and tails, tried to jump out of the air at them as they flew past, but didn't come close enough to them. The island, however, looked to be the first island of relative normality they'd seen in this entire damned place.

The trees looked normal and green, laden with fruit and nuts, there was grass growing and bushes with berries, and they spotted some deer and rabbits prancing about the fields of the island outside the small, rustic village. It was populated by wolves of various shapes, some humanoid, some four-legged, some larger and smaller.

Keytar looked for a place to set down, and on landing murmured, "Looks like this is definitely the place, let's see if we can't find out more… may just be a case of deciding to move on." He shrugged faintly, letting the wings go away.

"Well, they don't look like they're in dire straits to me…" Rettah said, heading in toward the village.

The Tolvurga looked up at them curiously as they approach, clearly not having seen any other relatively normal-looking being coming out this way since they arrived here.

"Well hey there," Keytar went to greet the first adult that they run across, smiling in friendly fashion.

"You have come across the Fields of Chaos and over the Lake of Death?" the Tolvurga said with some surprise. "You seek us out? But you do not appear to be of the elves, nor the dwarves or the felines or sliths either. Who and what are you?"

Keytar chuckled lightly, "The name's Keytar and this's Rettah, we were just poking around a bit when we ran across an elf kid who started callin' us Tolvurga, made me curious and decided to check things out. The kid was worried about where you lot had gone, since you hadn't been seen in a while."

"We have become trapped upon this Isle of Hope within the Lake of Death, for the Encroachments of Chaos press in upon us and sap our strength and we cannot find the way out. Please, if you can help us, speak with our chief, the Great Tolvurga, within the hut to the north of the firepit."

"Trapped? We got in easy enough," Keytar replied, looking puzzled then smirked and shook his head. "Walked right into it, too, didn't we?" He chuckled, "Well maybe there's somethin' we can do, we'll go see."

The Tolvurga helpfully pointed toward the hut in question, larger than the rest of the huts. Rettah nodded and headed over toward there. In that hut, they found a very large and muscular Tolvurga, wearing a belt and leather armbands adorned with fangs and reading over a scrap of parchment. He looked up at them as they entered.

"Hiya," Keytar nodded in greeting and introduced both of them again, then went on, "Sounds like you have some kinda trouble here, anything we can help out with?"

"I am Tolvurga of the Tolvurga," he said, looking them over. "What strange creatures these who come to offer to help, after the ruination of our homes by the foul Pattern-Breaker?"

Keytar grinned and let himself go a little fuzzy, Glabro taking up a hell of a lot less than the full warform. "Shapeshifters like yourself, though from another place. Never hurts to help out kin, no matter how distant they might be."

Tolvurga looked over him in startlement distrustfully. "Shape-shifters?" he repeated awkwardly. "Never before have I seen one who had such an ability who was not completely lost unto the powers of Chaos, and never then could they fully control it, the dark powers twisting and warping their form beyond sanity."

Keytar snorted lightly, okay so maybe they _weren't_ shapeshifters, but that still left em as fuzzy kin. "Would I be in here talkin' to you and offering to lend a hand if I wanted to screw ya over?" he asked.

"You do not appear to be as one whose mind has been twisted by the darkness of Chaos," Tolvurga replied. "Regardless of what strange abilities you might possess that are unfamiliar to my kind. We do not seek to bring about change and chaos where we go. We possess the same Order Magic of the elves, though to a less dire extent."

"I'm what's called a Glass Walker," Keytar grinned a little, "A werewolf that also does a lot of things that balance out the call of nature."

"The Talamir concerned themselves with nature. There were many Tolvurga there. We are not of their kind. We are the Tolvurga of Kelen Tarnos. We are the ones who must fight Chaos. And we have lost our homes because of the workings of the great Pattern-Breaker and her Wheel of Chaos…"

"Well, got good news for ya then," Keytar chuckled, "According to a pretty reliable source or two, that wheel's history, gone, poof." Of course he also remembered someone saying that its creator was still out there, but that was another matter.

"It matters not, for the Wheel to be destroyed, for it destroyed my entire world, and ripped the Pattern asunder. It is no more. There remains nothing left for us to return to, even could we leave this dreadful place, although we have brought what peace and order we could to it."

"Uhhh, there's still somethin' out there where you came from," Keytar replied, "Elf kid was wondering where you'd gone to since they hadn't seen the lot of ya in a while, that's what set us out this way."

Tolvurga blinked in surprise. "The Kabrir yet live? They were spared of the destruction of the Wheel? And the Wilds of Great Deeds have not succumbed unto the encroachments of Chaos?"

"Dunno what you'd call em." Keytar grinned. "But the elves are definitely still out there, in two different cities at least, one of em…" He made a face, "A little too much order there."

"The Sekir yet live as well?" Tolvurga said, even more surprised. "But that was the first of the places to which the Pattern-Breaker travelled, slaying thousands and harnessing their screaming souls unto the dread Wheel of Chaos…"

"Yeeeah, they're still out there, or," Keytar amended, "Maybe I should say they're _back_ there, you'd have to check out the history there for yourself, definitely some weird stuff going down there."

"I am uncertain as to the nature of events that have unfolded," Tolvurga said. "But if it is at all possible, we should return unto the Wilds of Great Deeds where dwell our friends the Kabrir, who have been unjustly rejected by Order and Chaos alike."

"Well hey, be more than willin' to lend you a hand there, if ya need it," Keytar replied, "The lake around here looks pretty nasty, but I can ferry folks across."

"This island will dissolve itself into the ever-changing realm of Chaos once we leave and are no longer imposing our Order upon it," Tolvurga said ruefully. "But such is as needs be, for how we have managed to survive here with barely a strong enough pattern aura to hold back the encroachments of Chaos, without which we, too, would have been lost…"

"Well it's a nice enough place," Keytar said, "But I can't imagine you wouldn't want to get back out and see how your old friends are doing, not to mention have some more room to run around in."

"Swear to me that you will do your best to try to bring us out of this place, whether we succeed or not, and I will lead my people on away from this Isle of Hope on chance that we may return unto our homes in the Wilds of Great Deeds."

"Hey, no prob." Keytar grinned. "I can get ya across that crazy lake, and we'll just have to keep an eye out for the crazy things hanging out on the way back."

"Very well," Tolvurga said, rising to his haunches and heading toward the door. He did not speak a word, but words echoed in their minds, "Come, Tolvurga. We leave this desolate place now, that we may return unto our homes. Gather your belongings and come to the firepit."

Keytar hung back, put a hand on Rettah's arm to stay her, and quietly said, "I'm gonna go turn into a nice metal boat to get them past that crazy lake, just tell em I went ahead to do a bit of scouting, okay?" He headed off to do so.

Rettah nodded to him as he went off, and one by one the Tolvurga trickled in toward the gathering area around the firepit, carrying packs of supplies, food, and such, and their cubs. Once they were all there, Rettah and Tolvurga headed off toward the south end of the island where they had come in, the rest of them coming along behind. There were around five hundred of them in all, including the cubs.

Keytar thought on the design for a minute, and decided to go with a flat-bottom boat with a nice high railing and mesh wiring to keep any of the nasty little biters at bay. He wasn't Azale, so he didn't sprout lips to greet them when they arrived, instead waiting to carry the first load across and begin the process. They climbed aboard, Rettah first with as many of the Tolvurga as could safely fit on them. Tolvurga himself stayed on the island to go last and make sure they all get across, doing one last check through the village to make sure they hadn't left anyone behind.

The boat would make the trip as many times as needed, Keytar quite content to putter along and get them to safety, the experience something to remember to tell Gizmo about when he reported in on how the thing was working out. It definitely had its advantages! … and not just for fun, cough.

It took a bit, but they finally got everyone across, Tolvurga herding them up together. Even as the last of them got aboard, it was plain to see that the island did seem to be unravelling a bit, the trees warping slightly, and on the opposite bank where they were gathered, things were looking slightly less chaotic. Now that was definitely interesting, Keytar mused silently, examining the last of them across as he waited for them to get moving again. He'd wait for them to get out of sight, then fly ahead to scout a bit in truth and then catch up again.

He completely failed to find any sign of the trail they followed in here. It had utterly vanished again into the fields of chaos, even many of the landmarks that would have otherwise been obvious on the way here have changed or vanished. Aw craaaaap, Keytar muttered to himself as he realized the trail was gone, wondering how the _hell_ it had stayed there _that_ long and then suddenly vanished as soon as it was needed again… Gaia really did have an evil sense of humor sometimes. He smirked as he found a place to set down ahead of them, and went in to say hello and explain the situation to the big cheese woof.

"It is as I had anticipated," Tolvurga replied. "For which direction might we travel in this ever-changing chaotic realm. But it is a malleable realm, to which one's thoughts can be directed to shape it to some extent, especially with so many of those born of Order here."

A lot like the Umbra back home, though they were looking at doing something a little bit different in regards to it. "Okay chief," Keytar said, "You pick the way, we'll run cover and make sure all the little indians stay in line. Sound good?"

"We had, however, already attempted to find a way out of this place," Tolvurga said. "And yet we failed. But we had not been attempting to return unto our home, as we did not believe that it had survived the coming of the Pattern-Breaker…"

Keytar grinned, having a sudden idea, "Hey babe, you still got those slippers?"

Rettah blinked at him in confusion for a moment. "I dunno, maybe they ended up in my pocket after we were boinking that one time, but I don't see how that would help anything… there's hundreds of them!"

Keytar smirked, "Hey, gimme a _little_ credit for bein' able to count beyond ten without takin' off my shoes. See, all ya gotta do is get _one_ of em back there, the best broadcaster you can find…" He looked at the head woof with a grin, seeing if he got the idea.

Rettah looked at him and said, "Are they even his size? No offense but he has awfully big paws…" She smirked faintly.

Keytar rolled his eyes and laughed, "You're not thinkin' it through! Doesn't matter which one of em it is, just so long as it's someone _familiar_ that they can home in on. Capisce?"

"Alright, alright, let's see, heh," Rettah said, digging through her pocket of holding to try to find the things.

Tolvurga said, "I am a mighty warrior, surely, but it is Koba who is the most skilled in the arts of the mind and spirit." He gestured over toward a smaller gray Tolvurga, who approached and nodded toward them.

"Okay, Koba it is," Keytar replied, "And you got someone else that could track down the familiar presence? Be a kinda pointless exercise if we go wanderin' around aimlessly," he smirked.

"Although it is not of my primary skills, I am more than capable of communicating over great distances with other similarly capable Tolvurga."

"Awright, then we be in business!" Keytar said, clapping his hands, then grinned at Rettah, "Provided ya didn't lose em somewhere along the way?"

"Right here," Rettah said, pulling out the things. "Can't say that's any stranger than some of the other crap Elkandu keep in their pockets…" She handed them off to Koba, who looked at them strangely but at least he knew what they were, and went to put them on.

Keytar chuckled, "As long as he don't end up in Kansas, we're in good shape. You ready?" He looked at Koba, and suppressed a grin, "Okay, so what ya gotta do is this… tap your heels together three times and say 'There's no place like home' each time, got it?" He managed to keep a remarkably straight face for it, at least.

Koba, clearly never having watched many movies, just nodded and thought that was a perfectly normal thing for a magical item, and proceeded to do as directed. When it was done, there was a bright green light, and Koba looked like he was being stretched and sucked away for a moment before vanishing entirely.

"Okay bossdog, you're on." Keytar grinned at Tolvurga. "You got a line on your friend that we can lead the herd along home to?"

Tolvurga closed his eyes, reaching out his senses and trying to locate him. He glowed for a moment and pointed off toward the left, a streak of blue lightning shooting out and where it crossed, a path paved with yellowish-colored stones appeared out of the ground. "I have found him. We must follow this road of a golden hue to reach the Edge of the World, I believe."

Keytar just looked over at Rettah for a second, then broke out in laughter. "Okay, okay," he said, regaining control, "I'll keep an eye out for the flying monkeys or fairy cats." He winked at Rettah. "You can keep watch for satyrs."

Rettah snickered softly and started off down the path after Tolvurga, and the long string of fuzzies came along behind them. It was pretty clear that these seemed to have the ability to impose some semblance of order upon pure chaos, even if even hundreds of them wasn't sufficient to prevent the two of them from shapeshifting. The trees near the path looked a bit more or less like one would expect trees to look like.

Keytar kept an eye on things just in case, roving up and down the column to make sure no one aws falling behind or needed a hand as he watched out for anything that might leap out of the underbrush. Although they were not assaulted at any point by squadrons of flying monkeys, they did, however, spot a creature that looked like King Kong with bat-like wings flying overhead. And then they were almost assaulted by a six-legged woolly mammoth, but Flying King Kong went to defend them from it and wrestled the creature off a cliff.

"Well _that_ was certainly weird," Keytar remarked to Rettah on his next round when he passed by, though he was personally glad they hadn't had to fight the thing since it woulda taken _forever_ to get the column in order again!

Further along the road, they did, however, spot some flying monkeys, at which point flying King Kong appeared again, climbed up a very tall twisted rock formation, and proceeded to swat at them.

Rettah said, "This place is weird…"

Keytar snickered, "Oh you can say that again, though it's better than Universal did."

He chuckled and headed back along the column to check on the various types, smiling reassuringly and offering the occasional greeting in passing. This ability they had was damned interesting, and he keeps a curious eye on the effect as they go along.

"Hey," Rettah said when he came up to the front of the line again. "Do you suppose this 'pattern aura' they mentioned could be why they can't shapeshift? It's not strong enough to stop us, sure, but it's actually _part_ of them…"

Keytar thought about that, settling in to walk alongside her for a while. "Hmm, y'know, it _could_ be. Considering the way the stuff affected our own shifting back in that first city, it'd probably play holy hell if we were using it ourself without any way to turn it off… or thinking to try."

"Sure, they might just be naturally wolfmen without any shapeshifting ability, but then why would they come in forms looking very much like the different forms a werewolf can take? That'd make sense if they were all one form or something…"

"Yeah it would," Keytar nodded thoughtfully, "So somewhere along the way they picked this up or had it inflicted on em, some got stuck in one form or another and just stayed that way… and whatever their mojo is, they don't appear to have enough control to turn it off, or just don't think about it since they've been fighting their opposite number."

"Hmm, I wonder if there are any Tolvurga around who don't have that ability, the ones associated with chaos perhaps, as Tolvurga seemed to imply… You know, this is probably a very bad idea, but there's only one way to find out eh?"

"Well didn't he say there were some who were nature tenders?" Keytar said, "Those shouldn't be too bad, and they might have more of a grip on just what this ability is."

"Perhaps, should at least check there first before going after their nutcases, eh," Rettah said, snickering.

It was hard to tell with the order field around them, but it appeared that they were getting out of the fields of chaos slowly, the colors in the sky calming toward the normal purple hue of Kelen Tarnos.

"Yeeeeah," Keytar agreed with a heartfelt nod, "Some of the crap that was running around back there doesn't give me very high hopes that the Chaos side of these guys isn't more like the BSDs than anything else."

The road began to fade beneath their feet as they emerged into the relative normality of the Wilds of Great Deeds, and the Tolvurga were quite grateful and cheerful as they headed off toward their homes.

"Well there's our good deed for the day," Keytar commented quietly to Rettah, quirking a smile at the improved attitude of the Tolvurga, then went on with a faint grin, "Care to see if we can go two for two, or should we take a break and see what people are up to first?"

"Let's see them off wherever they're going first," she said, heading out along through the woods. "At least we're out of that crazy place now."

Tolvurga approached them again and said, "I am most grateful unto you for your assistance in giving us the knowledge that our home was well and allowing us to return here."

"Hey, glad to pass the message along." Keytar smiled. "Be sure to tell that elf kid that he's the one responsible for you getting back in touch, I'm sure he won't be hard to find and will love that."

"I shall be certain to relay that knowledge unto him," Tolvurga said, nodding solemnly. "Is there aught which might be granted unto you in gratitude for our salvation?"

Nah, we're good," Keytar replied, "Though those slippers'd be good to get back, never know when they might come in handy." He grinned.

"I shall ensure that they be returned unto you, and express my gratitude for their use," Tolvurga said. "We approach soon the village to which we had dwelt prior to the coming of the Pattern-Breaker, born of the Kabrir."

Sure enough, they come upon a deserted town up ahead, and Koba came out to meet them, beaming, and happily returned the scarlet footwear to Rettah, who quickly pocketed them again.

"Glad to see everyone made it alright." Keytar grinned. "And maybe we can do a little more for ya along the way, but have to see how that turns out."

Tolvurga arranged to send someone along to the Kabrir town to let them know they were back, and said, "There is one thing which I will do for you, if you wish to explore the other lands of this realm and meet the other tribes of the Tolvurga if you will, there are maps which I have which we use for travelling which I can grant unto you to assist you in that."

"Now _that'd_ be handy," Keytar says. "One of the groups you mentioned sounded particularly interesting, you said they served nature or something like that."

"Come, I will show you," Tolvurga said, heading into one of the buildings. Sure enough, there were maps here, particularly a large, detailed one painted onto one of the walls. It was clearly marked with cities and peoples. "The Tolvurga of Talama and the Grove of Order are the ones which you seek?" he said, indicating one part of the map which looked oddly like a yin-yang symbol. Talama was marked inside the circle of order inside the forests of chaos.

"Oh _that_ should be a fun trip." Keytar smirked, then shrugged. "Never asked for a boring life." He stored an image of the map away for later reference and nodded to Tolvurga. "Thanks, that should help a lot."

"If you wish, I shall send one to guide you through the forests of chaos unto the Grove of Order," Tolvurga said.

Keytar grinned. "Nah, you're gonna need all the help you can get setting back up, blowing out the cobwebs and all that, thanks for the offer though. I think we can manage to get there without getting _too_ lost, right?" He looked over at Rettah and snickered.

Rettah grinned and said, "I never get lost. Just sometimes I don't know where I am."

Tolvurga said, "Thank you again for your assistance." He hands them one of the smaller maps on a piece of parchment, gave a nod, and headed off to get things organized. Judging by the distance markings on the map, this was not a very big world at all.

Keytar wished him well, then chuckled as the wolf went out to see to his people. "I think I'm gonna hunt someone down before we do this," he said, "I don't really want to go tromping through these 'Chaos Woods' on foot, dunno about you."

Rettah snickered softly and said, "I'll hardly blame you, especially after that last display of what might be around here…"

"No kidding," Keytar agreed, "Let's hit Torn Elkandu and see if Salara's running around someplace, I'd be surprised if she couldn't give an idea of the sort of thing I'm thinkin' of."

Rettah gave a nod and pocketed the map for now and Recalled.


	5. Harmonious Grove

"As entertaining as it is to see King Kong swatting flying monkeys, I think I'll prefer to minimize that for the moment."

"King Kong swatting flying monkeys?" Salara asked from behind them as they recalled.

Keytar jumped around to phase her, smirked. "Don't _do_ that! Where'd you come from anyway?"

Salara grinned, "Do you want the facetious answer? No? Oh fine, I knew you were looking for me, so I thought I'd drop in. Things are looking good on the Eyes of Truth anyway."

Rettah said, "We've just been visiting a very um, pleasant place called the 'Fields of Chaos' past the 'Edge of the World' in the Pattern Realm. And met some unwere-wolves, and were planning on meeting some more, although that requires heading through a 'Forest of Chaos'…"

"Oh!" Salara replied brightly, "I remember dreaming about there, one of the last bastions of Order while the Wheel was still turning…" She shook her head, smiled a little. "So care to get a drink or something to eat while you ask me what you're dying to?" she directed the last at Keytar, grinning.

Rettah chuckled softly and said, "Sure." She headed off toward the Crux, figuring that hopefully the crazy foxes were still romping around Gal at this point.

Salara smiled warmly as she turned to walk along with them. "So what have you two been up to? And where's your friend?"

Keytar snorted, "Don't ask, ya don't wanna know. I know, and I don't wanna."

Rettah snickered softly. "Yeah, we went off to Tinemocun, ran into a couple vampires, went to cheer off another one, which involved a trip to the mall, which ended in sex, which left us coming back here for breakfast, where we ran into a couple foxes and their crazy friend, where they ran off to Daggervale, and we went off to the Pattern Realm, and rescued some unwerewolves from the fields of chaos…"

Salara chuckled softly as they got to the Crux and made their way to a table. "It certainly sounds like you've been busy, and all I've been up to is digging through various systems, chatting with a delightful computer, and avoiding the occasional 'accidental' bump by a red-shirted crewmember aboard the ship." She smirked and shook her head.

"Just pull out something that looks like a weapon and they'll scatter like flies," Rettah said with a grin. "I swear, Suzy does have a strange sense of humor sometimes. So yeah. First we went to the city of Seka there, but that place had this really strong 'pattern aura' there, and we couldn't even shapeshift or anything, so we went out to Kelen Tarnos instead…"

"A very strong Order field will do that," Salara acknowledged, "In fact, if it gets _too_ strong then nothing can change at all, complete stasis."

Keytar made a face, "Yeah, always fun to sit too long when a Weaverling's bored and end up being calcified. Ech."

"Then when we met these Tolvurga, they were like, werewolves that emitted an order field as well, they couldn't shift or anything but they damned well _looked_ like werewolves in their various forms, they had this little island out there in this hellishly chaotic place, we managed to get them back to Kelen Tarnos though…"

"We hypothesized that they might actually _be_ werewolves and not knowing how to turn off their innate order field was preventing them from shifting," Rettah added.

"That's definitely a possibility." Salara nodded. "For example, if either of you learned that specific metaphysical ability and built it to a sufficient power level, you'd be unable to shapeshift while using it unless you directed _outside_ yourselves. Change and Stasis do _not_ work well together, I'm afraid."

"So we were planning on talking to these Talamir druids that Tolvurga mentioned and seeing if we could find anything more about it," Rettah said. "And also because it seems very unlikely that those two foxes will visit that particular realm," she adds brightly.

Salara laughed lightly, "From the way you talk about them, I'd guess that staying as far away from them as possible is a goal of yours, hmm?"

Keytar smirked. "Ranks right up there with avoiding gettin' shot in the head with a silver bullet, mmyep."

"Oh yes, one of those is bad enough, but two?" Rettah said, deciding to consume a sufficient quantity of alcohol. "Right. Yeah. We figured the Talamir might be a better idea than going to hunt down anyone associated with the Chaos there for starters."

Keytar obviously agreed as a waitress arrived to take their orders, going with some pasta to eat and a bottle of wine to go with it. Salara snickered at Rettah, and just ordered a Coke for herself.

"Considering what we saw past the Edge of the World there, I'm not sure I'd care to meet their equivalents to the Black Spiral Dancers, yes," Rettah said.

"I'm not familiar with those, but I can certainly guess their nature," Salara replied, making a face, "Probably a good idea to avoid the trouble."

Keytar said, "Speaking of which, that brings me to the point I wanted to talk to you about. There were these little flyers back on Rettah's homeworld, but they were luminite powered and that's not something I could duplicate even as a metamorph…"

Salara listened closely as he went on.

"The idea I had was brought up by the way Suzcecoz described luminite as working, specifically that it _should_ be possible to have a design that taps directly into the ethereal for its power source without the intermediary… because _I'd_ be the one providing the channel. Think you could help me with a little design work?"

Salara considered it briefly, then replied, "That'd be simple enough to do, and I can help you, but…"

"But?" he asked, quirking a brow.

Salara grinned as she replied, "Unless you're familiar with channeling that kind of power it could be just a _little_ dangerous to you."

Rettah hehed and drank her beer and said, "Hardly necessary to use luminite for just flying around anyway, really. Good stuff, surely, but it's kind of like using an anti-aircraft gun to kill a mosquito."

"Right!" Salara smiled at her. "And tapping the ethereal directly would be like taking the Eyes of Truth to do the same. There's some _other_ designs, though, that are light and fast, and you'd probably enjoy them just as much."

Keytar grinned. "Hey, don't look at me, _she'll_ be the one flyin', I'll just be the beast of burden."

Rettah snickered softly. "My plane back at home just had the tiniest bit of luminite, and it was an older design so it wasn't even very efficiently wired up. But yeah, this is hardly a very big world, anyway…"

"Oh there's some _very_ interesting possibilities, even without luminite, at least for atmospheric craft," Salara said, then brings a glowing image into being over their table of a sleek little double-winged craft, "I remember this one, called a dragonfly for obvious reasons. It weighs all of a couple hundred pounds and has a hydrogen ramjet for an engine. With the wings reconfigured…" 

The image shifted, the wings converging and sweeping back almost flush with the frame, "It can zip right past the speed of sound and still remain maneuverable." She glanced over at Rettah curiously to see her opinion.

Rettah grinned a bit and said, "Say, that's a nice design…" She looked over the image with considerable interest.

"And with the mass limitations, it should work quite nicely." Salara smiled, glanced over at Keytar. "With a little work, you won't have quite the same limits in that regard, since the metaphysical profile of the form allows you to store additional mass without any appreciable effect other than expanding the ability."

Keytar blinked in confusion, "Huh?"

"I've no idea what she just said either," Rettah said. "And that's why I don't build the toys, I just play with them."

Keytar hmmed and grinned at Rettah.

Salara just smirked at the two of them. "In simplest terms," she said, "You don't _need_ to eat to sustain the form, but anything you _do_ eat will be added to the mass you can apply to a transformation. Of course if you wanted to simplify it further, you could directly ingest more dense materials, like liquid metals, to hasten the process."

"Yummy," Rettah said with a smirk. "So on the upside, does that mean he never needs to look for a restroom or a tree to piss behind either?"

Salara laughed lightly. "No, the form is _quite_ efficient and self-sustaining, regenerating itself at an incredible rate, providing substantial resistances, and bringing the aging process to a halt. Overall a very advantageous state."

Keytar hmmed, then blinked. "Waaaait, what was that about the aging thing?"

Salara replied with a quiet chuckle, "It regenerates too quickly to pay any attention to natural degradation."

Rettah chuckled. "Heh, join the club, guess we really do have all the time in the world," she said, winking at him. "Not that I'm overly sure why _I_ don't age either, for that matter, I'm no metamorph."

"There are a variety of factors, but I won't bore you with the details." Salara grinned, then giggled at the blank shock on Keytar's face.

He recovered and dug into the pasta, chewing thoughtfully.

"Hmm, there was another thing," Rettah said. "When we were in the city of Seka, after he tried to turn into an elf that looked like them, it didn't work at first but then after a few minutes he slowly started changing…"

"The forces of Order and Stasis _are_ very strong there," Salara said, "But the metamorph is on a power level of its own and will resist and combat a wide range of opposing powers. Two powers meet head to head, and even if they're evenly matched each side is going to show some degree of influence with enough work. I'd think that a metamorph who's quite experienced and familiar with the ability and works with it all the time would have no trouble there."

"Interesting," Rettah said, finishing up another beer. "I wonder what it's like in Talama…"

"That depends on a variety of factors." Salara grinned. "But the most important of them being that you should go and see for yourselves. You'll undoubtedly enjoy trying out that design, and meeting new people is always entertaining."

"Well, yes, I'm just idly wondering while waiting to actually go there," Rettah said brightly.

Salara chuckled lightly and looked over at Keytar, "You'll find the full design specifications in your implant, listed under mechanical vehicle, winged: Dragonfly."

Keytar smirked as he took a look over the specs and got a mildly-impressed expression, "That's very nice…"

Rettah grinned and said, "We may have all the time in the world, but I've never been one to spend it sitting down. Shall we?"

"Oh hell yeah." Keytar grinned broadly and stood up, then looked over as Salara remained seated and smirked. "Not coming with us?"

Salara chuckled lightly and shook her head. "I'm going to look around Torn Elkandu a little, you two have fun." She was particularly interested in examining the Nexus and perhaps taking a sidetrip out to see Suzy's former working city.

"Heh, okay then," Rettah said, giving a wave and heading for the Nexus again. "This should prove interesting."

Salara smiled quietly as the two left, mentally apologizing for bending the command she'd been given but not wanting to intrude _too_ often into their lives. She chuckled, finished her Coke, and went to do something productive.

Keytar trotted off with considerable enthusiasm, the shock of the news having worn off in the face of this interesting new toy… hey, he was a Glass Walker, it was to be expected.

Rettah took them back to the forests of Kelen Tarnos again, some ways out from the two towns. "Here we are. Ready to roll?"

Keytar closed his eyes, examining the details in his mind with a grin, then nodded and transformed. The aircraft looked entirely too fragile to be able to fly, its design made from superlight materials that made it almost translucent. "Roll nothin', let's fly!" came from inside the craft, a speaker built into the control panel.

Rettah took an appreciative look over the were-craft with a broad grin before climbing inside and taking a good look around the interior as well. "Mm, I like. Let's hit the sky, then."

The controls were fairly standard, and it appeared that the multi-purpose little craft was designed for VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) too!

Keytar chuckled, "Watch the stick, babe."

"But I like to play with your stick," she said, taking them off toward the south.

"Didn't say not to play, just not to abuse," Keytar chuckled.

He left the driving to her even if he _could_ do it himself… that was kinda the point in finding out how to do it in the first place. He did turn the craft's sensors to full sensitivity though, to see just what they were 'missing' as they passed the Chaos-infested forest. It wasn't as bad as what they had been through to find the Tolvurga, but there were still plenty of warped and twisted trees, carnivorous plants, and mutant monsters that they'd probably like to avoid. Keytar relayed some of the more 'interesting' specimens to be found in the wilds below, and helpfully provided a detailed course update to bring them toward their destination.

"What a lovely and delightful place," Rettah commented dryly, heading along that course toward the clearly brighter grove in the midst of the chaotic, dark forest below. "Not too far ahead at least, that should be Talama right there."

"I'd say that's a pretty good bet," Keytar agreed, then teased, "Be a doll and try not to crash land, huh?" he chuckled.

"I'll try," Rettah said, chuckling. "Though I'm sure you could just regenerate anyway," she added with a wink. She did manage to bring them down in the sunny grove without incident, and climbed out to take a look around. "Nice place."

The sky here was, inexplicably, blue and sunny, where it had been dark and violently purple and red over the chaos forest.

Keytar regained his normal form and walked up behind her to slip his arms around. "Mm, yeah, but it's a nice day. Rawr." He playfully nibbled at an ear, then whistled innocently as he stepped away and clasped his hands behind him, looking around.

There was a rather nice-looking town toward the south, seemingly built of living wood coaxed to grow in that shape, a stark contrast to the harsh angles of Seka or the rustic towns in Kelen Tarnos. As they approached, they saw that the buildings were not very closely clustered together, and it's inhabited by elves and Tolvurga, living together.

Keytar hmmmed, taking a look over the cozy scene, then heads casually over to make a closer inspection. Definitely didn't have the same feel as the other places they'd been to had.

The inhabitants looked over with quiet curiosity toward the strangers, themselves an odd sight in a place like this. "Greetings, strangers," said one robed elf who came up to them. "Welcome to Talama. If you mean no harm here, no harm will come to you."

"Oh we certainly don't mean any harm." Keytar grinned. "Heard about the place from another group of Tolvurga who live north of here… well, they live there _again_ , I should say," he waved it off, "Anyway, thought we'd come and take a look-see."

"Ah, the Tolvurga of Kelen Tarnos. They are a militant, unharmonious lot, but they serve the cause of Order, so they mean well," said the druid. "If you wish to speak with the leader of the Tolvurga here, you will find him in the tree beside the pond."

"Probably just the man I'd be looking to see." Keytar nodded, tossed off a lazy salute, "Thank ya muchly," then headed off to find the new furball commander.

In fact, they found him outside the tree beside the pond, sitting on his haunches in front of it and looking quietly off at the water. This one would appear to be a lupus. He looked up at them quietly when they approached.

Keytar went to sit on the grass nearby, grinning at the thought that he didn't have to worry about grass stains on his wiseguy suit anymore. "Well hey there," he said brightly in greeting, then provided introductions and a recap of where they'd heard of this pocket from, then went on, "Just curious to see how things might be different here."

'Greetings,' said a voice clearly in their minds. 'I am Salitam. This means, Peaceful Tree, in your language. You have spoken with the Tolvurga of Kelen Tarnos? Yes, things are not quite the same here. They seek to fight the chaos. We, however, seek to live in harmony with it, keeping a balance to allow neither order nor chaos superiority.'

Seemed to be a popular ability among the fuzzies out this way, Keytar chuckled inwardly, then said, "So you don't look at the first sign of someone shapechanging and wonder whether they're gonna go totally loco on you, huh?"

'Such an ability is not common here,' Salitam replied. 'Although not all who possess such an ability are mad, such madness tends to be inevitable for they will oft be touched by Chaos, without the protective cloak of Order to defend them.'

Keytar grinned a little. "Back where I came from, there's a whole bunch of shapeshifters, all different kinds, and they don't tend to be any crazier than your average person. There were exceptions, of course, but _those_ crazy bastards went _waaaaaaay_ over any lines."

'Perhaps where you are from, the world is not so closely touched by Chaos as it is here,' Salitam replied. 'It is very difficult to maintain a balance when Chaos is so strong and constantly attempts to devour all that we have built, but neither must we allow the Pattern to grow too strong, lest we fall into the stasis of Seka.'

"Oh there's always a line to be walked," Keytar said, "Whether it's the thin line of Rage that can lash out at anything around you and destroy, or to walk between the worlds of spirit and man in just the right amounts to keep the wolf…" he paused, considering that thought carefully, "Do you visit the Ethereal plane much? Or, if this is _in_ that plane, do you ever step over to the Material?"

Salitam seemed puzzled. 'I do not comprehend what you mean. What is less material than what is around us? What is less ethereal than the fields of Chaos past the Edge of the World? Our world is Order and Chaos, not Material and Ethereal.'

"Hmm, yet you say shapeshifting's not common among you," Keytar replied thoughtfully, "And it's apparently not seen at all in the Tolvurga to the north. I'm tryin' to figure out just why that is and if there's anything that can be done about it." He grinned. "I know just how _useful_ that can be, and it opens up a whole new layer for a society that _should_ be shapeshifters as a whole."

'What should be that is not?' Salitam wondered. 'I am Tolvurga. What else would I be? Why should I desire to change what I am?'

"So you're gonna let Stasis take ya, huh?" Keytar grinned. "That's not much of a balanced approach. Without _some_ change you're not accepting anything of the Chaos you say you try to."

'I do not understand. The forces of Chaos are strong, but to allow that in…' Salitam mused thoughtfully. 'Those capable of changing form were those born of the blood of Chaos, or mutated in such a way as to harness Chaos magic rather than Order. It does happen from time to time.'

"I think it might be a little more common than you think," Keytar replied drily, "Just look at the different forms that your people fall under…" He shifted slowly through the forms he'd seen them in, then returned to his homid form as he went on, "They're all part of the same race and blood."

Salitam watched with some interest, more curious than startled by it as Tolvurga was. 'You do not seem mad nor twisted by an excess of Chaos… I must consider what you have said. While we, too, possess the pattern aura of our cousins, it is a measure of self-defense developed by the peoples of this world to combat the encroachments of Chaos. Without it, the world would likely have been unraveled…'

"Yeah, kinda figured that one." Keytar nodded. "But it's just a tool like anything else, if ya learn how to use it and, more important, when _not_ to use it, you might just open up a whole new way of defending yourselves."

'Your words are intriguing, but I am not certain how they might be applied,' Salitam tepped. 'We are each born with the innate ability to shape the world around us, and it is shaped toward what we believe must be so. This is why the homes of the different peoples look so very different, for their vastly different outlooks on the world.'

"That comes down to changin' how you look at the world," Keytar replied, "Right now you look at it as somethin' that's out to kill ya, and sometimes it is, I know that all too well as a shapeshifter. But there's an old saying, fight fire with fire, that you just might find handy. So you wanna keep a balance? Then use Stasis _and_ Change to keep the world around ya safe."

Salitam gave a nod and replied, 'We try to some extent, without allowing Chaos full reign. It is difficult and powerful, however. If you say that we should be shapeshifters, why, then, are we incapable of it? Is it, then, because of the Order that binds us flesh and bones?'

"I showed ya the forms that the shapeshifters from my own home can use, they're the same ones you do so it's obvious that it's _possible_ ," Keytar said, "Now, when we went to another city around here where Order is really heavy it forced the Change down and made it impossible. I asked someone about that, and even on a weaker basis it'd do the same thing if it was internalized and always on, a part of yourself."

'How does one reject a part of oneself?' Salitam replied. 'But then, we are Order Mages. True Pattern Mages are extremely rare, for they not only impose Order upon the world around them, but are also capable of controlling and manipulating that Order. But perhaps, you say, is it possible to learn how to temporarily suppress this innate ability?'

Keytar grinned. "Anything you can do to yourself you can do to the world around ya, it's just a matter of accepting that and figuring out how to do it. Take a stick, you can hit yourself with it, right? But you can also whack some Chaos beast over the head with it. One tool or another, it's no different."

'So then you say, is the difference merely a matter of strength and nothing more? Or simply a realization that one can do so consciously, that makes one a true Pattern Mage? For Kabri was the strongest who ever lived, and the bards still tell the tale of the Unmaking of Taike…'

"Where there's a will, there's a way." Keytar grinned. "Some are gonna have more natural aptitude, natch, but anyone who shows the ability can do something more with it than what you're lettin' yourselves do now. It's a matter of perspective and focus, turnin' it from yourself to the world around ya, thereby leavin' more room for yourself to _grow_."

'Hmm. I see,' Salitam thinks. 'Your reasoning is sound and you believe what you are saying. As needs must, I shall therefore attempt what it is you speak.' The wolf closed his eyes and concentrated, and after a few moments, Keytar felt a small, almost imperceptible pressure seem to ease up a bit.

Keytar didn't comment on it immediately, waiting for the other to work things out on his own for a little bit. Once the wolf released the concentration, he grinned. "That's definitely a start, and once you can get others to figure out the hows and whys of it, you can set up a way to decide who does what. You're not, for example, gonna want to have everyone ignoring the maintenance."

'If, as you say, we are capable of shapeshifting, should it not therefore only be necessary while actually doing so?' Salitam pointed out. 'But then, how, therefore, does one change form, if as you say, we should be able to?'

"Once you get used to the idea and develop finer control, yeah it won't be necessary," Keytar agreed, "But if you send out a warparty, they're gonna have to spend a little more time switching it back and forth than might be wise in the middle of a fray. As for the shapeshifting thing, hmm, now that's just a matter of accepting the changing nature and _willing_ yourself to another form."

'Hmm, I see…' Salitam replies. 'I must see this for myself…' He went quiet, and for several minutes it did not appear that anything wa happening.

Rettah stood by quietly leaning against the tree, just watching.

If there was anything Keytar's learned from bein' a Glass Walker it was how to lounge around without looking like it, and he made himself comfortable while keeping an eye on the Tolvurga. Definitely an interestin' buncha folks, and he had to wonder whether their little ability was something that could be learned…

Then, finally, Salitam began to change form, a little larger and more humanoid. He found himself sitting there by the water awkwardly, and blinked for a moment, holding up a hand to look at it wide-eyed.

Keytar grinned over at him. "See, that wasn't so bad was it? It'll get easier the more you get used to it, but that'll probably take a little time. _That's_ why you'll wanna hand out job descriptions for a while, at least until everyone involved is competent enough with your Order thing and the shapeshifting that they can switch between em at will."

'This feels very strange…' Salitam tepped. 'I had not previously considered it possible… But you, you in that form do not appear as a wolf…'

"Wolf ain't my favorite form." Keytar grinned. "They ain't gotta thumb which kinda limits them gettin' into the fridge to crack open a beer. Besides, there's a lot more fun to be had in other forms."

Salitam frowned for a moment consideringly, then after a few moments more the fur retracted from his body and he became fully human. And completely naked, naturally. 'So what you say! So there may be those among the furless who are, in fact, truly Tolvurga who never realized it because of their Order Magic?'

"Very possible." Keytar nodded in agreement. "Though some of them may just be kin, same thing with the straight wolves, ya won't know til you get someone who can tell which is which, or just have em try it out."

'I had never considered also that there may be Tolvurga among those who did not immediately appear to be so,' Salitam tepped thoughtfully. 'We have been interbreeding with them, and the normal wolves, for as long as anyone can remember. My mother was one such mere wolf, she lacked the various gifts of the Tolvurga.'

"Yup, that's how Gaia decided to keep us from gettin' too stagnant or somethin'," Keytar said, then grinned, "Ought to make for some interestin' social changes once you folks get things rollin'."

'Gaia? This world was created by Keolah… Is Gaia merely another name for her then?' Salitam attempted to stand up unsteadily, and nearly ended up falling into the pond.

"Whoa, steady there!" Keytar said and hopped up to help the Tolvurga steady himself with a grin. "You're gonna have to learn some new tricks to go along with the forms. Just take it nice and easy."

'So I see,' Salitam replied with a faint smirk, 'I feel like a newborn cub learning to walk all over again.'

Keytar chuckled, "Yeah, but learnin' to walk as a wolf is a hell of a lot easier, it's the extra set of trainin' paws to work with. Maybe you should try the Crinos form for a while, eh? Give ya the advantages of movin' around on two or four feet til ya get the hang of it."

'Perhaps,' Salitam replied. 'I believe I shall also require to obtain clothing before walking around without any fur or I shall be quite the sight in the village. The furless ones have quite the fixation about not showing their genitalia. Which form is this Crinos you speak of?'

Keytar snickered, "Yeah, the lupus back home are a real treat that way, takes em forever to understand that clothing fixation, if they ever do. Me, I'm torn on the subject." He grinned over at Rettah and winked, then returned his attention to the Tolvurga, stepped back, and changes into the larger warform. "This one's Crinos, though you may call it somethin' else."

'Ah. I see,' Salitam replied. 'We call it Vurgata, which is, Strong Wolf.' After some thought and concentration, he managed to shift into that form as well.

"Awright, that's the ticket!" Keytar enthused, "Now you can run around on all fours and practice the two-legged thing at your leisure," he grinned, "The tail'll help with balance, too, just don't get too used to it."

'This shall be an interesting thing to discover and to learn more about…' Salitam allowed the Order field to come up around him again and teps, 'Thank you, I must inform my brethren of this fascinating news.'

Keytar chuckled lightly and returned to his homid form. "You do that, I think the others to the north will be interested ta hear about what we confirmed here."

Salitam loped off to speak with the others in Talama.

Rettah grinned once he's gone and said, "So, it appears I was right, they _are_ werewolves after all…"

"Darn females, always gotta be right," Keytar teased with a grin, "And you definitely were, should be interestin' to see what they come up with over the next few years, eh?"

Rettah chuckled softly. "Quite. Sooo, don't suppose you have any burning desire to check out this Taike chaos city, hmm?" She snickered softly.

Keytar quirked a brow at her and smirks, "You're just itchin' to get into trouble, aren't ya babe?" he chuckled lightly, "Well hell, I'm game if you are, not like I was jokin' about the Abyss as an alternative to gettin' stuck with a couple foxes."

"I'm sure it can't be that bad, at least we can be pretty sure there won't be an order field up there to keep us from shifting," Rettah said, pulling out the map and taking a look over it. "North-northeast, it appears, on the Edge of the World. Hmm, looks like there's a city even further north of that called Keru, pretty far past the Edge, too…"

Keytar chuckled and headed out, angling toward the edge of town where there might be a little clear space for a takeoff, "Let's put some wings to the plan, then."

There were some open, sunny clearings about that should suffice. Rettah tucked the map away again with a grin. "I wouldn't be much of an Eiram if I weren't constantly doing ill-advised things."

"From what your cousin was saying, I think it has less to do with the genes than it does with your own 501s," Keytar grinned, then shifted to the ultralight when they got out to the clearing, ready to take off as soon as she was settled in.

Rettah snickered softly and climbed inside. "Whatever," she said as she took a seat and went to see about taking off and heading off in the direction of Taike.

Keytar drew up a memory of the map and plotted the general course, but couldn't resist a little fun on the way…. he disabled the manual controls with a mental grin, reconfigured the wings, then playfully said, "Hang on." As soon as Rettah looked to be taking his advice, he punched the thrust and streaked on with the occasional spin and aerobatic for variety.

"Oh dear…" Rettah said, sitting back and hanging on. "Whee!"


	6. City of Chaos

Forests streaked past below and they came out over the Sea of Chaos, beyond which lay Taike on a strip of land that lay between the ocean and the Edge of the World.

Keytar throttled back with a laugh, the plane slowing and the wings separating and swinging forward again, "What. A. _Rush_!" He'd have to remember to thank Salara for the design, it sure made goin' from one place to the other a lot more interesting! And Gadget, mustn't forget him either.

Rettah giggled in amusement. "Indeed. Looks like we're almost there…"

A city lay ahead, at a point midway between where the relative normality of the forests like Kelen Tarnos met up with the chaotic, twisted trees past the Edge of the World. The buildings were twisted and warped, many of them seeming to defy the laws of physics, like strange impossible art.

"You're sure about this?" Keytar chuckled as he looked over the place and kept an eye out for a spot to land, displaying some sensor pics of the surroundings for her. 

"Not especially, but we're here right?" she replied brightly.

There was some clear land near the city where they might be able to land, looking more like an ashen wasteland with the occasional scraggly tree than healthy, open fields.

"Oh yeah, and you were moping about the battlefield, females sheesh," Keytar teased good-naturedly and circled down for a landing in the waste. Really looked like a delightful neighborhood.

Rettah snickered and climbed out once they set down, taking a look around the area. "Mighty cheerful place, this."

There appeared to be a number of mutants amongst the inhabitants of the city, although the majority of them look like fairly normal elves, although with black hair and purple eyes being more common than else, there were also some with violet, silver, or even rainbow hair, and all shades of eye colors.

"Looks like a Saturday night downtown," Keytar remarked straight-faced after he returned to his normal form, then glanced at her with a grin, "Just remember this was _your_ idea, so if anything goes haywire we're _so_ even on the Arcadia detour."

Rettah snickered softly and said, "Hey, I'm not complaining about that… much… anymore…"

She headed in toward the city. Among this crowd, they hardly received a second glance. As they got in toward it, it appeared less of a madhouse and more of a normal city, with restaurants, shops, and such being advertised in the perpetual twilight of the dark purple sky.

Keytar chuckled lightly and strolled casually along, taking a good look around. "Doesn't seem like such a bad place to me so far," he remarked, "No worse than the boys gettin' together to hang around downtown where the Brujah run and play."

There weren't, however, any obvious Tolvurga in sight. It was, of course, considerably less of a natural surroundings than Kelen Tarnos or Talama, though. Rettah looked past at brothels, taverns, and pawn shops lit with a magical equivalent of neon signs.

"Actually this looks more like my kinda place." Keytar smirked. "Hell of a lot more fun to be had here than the static dead burbs they have elsewhere."

"Heh, indeed," Rettah said, picking a bar at random and heading over toward it. The sign outside depicted an animated mug of beer slowly frothing. "Let's see how good their beer is shall we?"

"Now _that_ sounds like a plan." Keytar grinned and went inside to scope the place out.

The place looked moderately active, various chaos elves about drinking and chatting. The barkeep was a bald elf with purple eyes and a tattoo on his scalp that seemed to writhe on its own. "What can I get yas?" he said as they approach.

"Beer for me, and ya got anythin' to munch on around here that ain't gonna bite back?" Keytar replied.

Rettah seconded the beer, and the barkeep poured them a couple large mugs and slid over a bowl of chips that looked like fairly normal potato chips aside from the fact that they were a light purplish-yellow color. "There ya go." The beer, at least, was the color it was supposed to be.

"Thanks," Keytar replied, giving the chips a funny look and a smirk, then shrugged and took a drink as he looked the place over.

The beer was fairly strong, but not half bad. The patrons had quite the interesting assortment, but aside from some of the weirder mutants, nothing you'd not generally find in one of the rougher spots of a modern town. There was a guy with three arms, for instance, and one with no less than twelve eyes.

"Probably not a good place to drag out some of the old playground taunts," Keytar commented quietly to Rettah with a little grin, "Looks like people've been playin' in a little too much toxic waste around here."

Rettah chuckled softly. "The beer's not bad though."

The barkeep returned, wiping a glass, and said, "Don't think I seen yas around here afore, and ya don't got the look of the folks of Taike. I can tell, ya see."

"Nah, we're just passin' through, tourist types," Keytar replied, then grinned. "Or explorers, dependin' on who ya ask. Decided to come out this way and see what things are like on the other side."

"Heh, good on ya ta come, hope ya ain't listen'd too much ta the Pattern propaganda," the barkeep said, snorting softly. "Ain't never catch me dead near one of them cities. Makes yer skin crawl, don't it?"

"I never listen to propaganda, a good way to make your brain rot." Keytar smirked. "And yeah, walked into one of the cities and walked right back out of it, not particularly fond of havin' my shape enforced by someone else's decree."

"Good on ya," the barkeep said, putting away the glass. "Taike's a good town, specially since the worst of the nuts went north to Keru. That place is a little too chaotic even for the likes of _me_." He spat. "Keru means 'death' in our language, and a well-named place it is."

"Oh?" Keytar asked, looking at the 'tender curiously, "Saw it on the map, natch, but haven't heard much about it. What's up with Keru that makes it such a 'delightful' place to visit?"

"You wouldna wanna go there, mate, not 'less you'd like to get tortured and killed slowly, or worse, converted to their mad cause," the barkeep replied. "They ain't too friendly with outsiders a 'tall. They was founded generations back by some folks from Taike who didna wanna go 'long with the Revolution, no peace or democracy for _those_ nuts."

"Right, fanatics, lunatic fanatics on the fringe no less," Keytar replied, "Definitely sounds like something to avoid. What's this 'cause' of theirs anyway, some 'Chaos Rulez!' cult or something?"

"Somethin' like that," the barkeep said, shrugging. "Chaos ain't all about death and destruction, but that's what they are. Give us all a bad name, s'what they do."

"I hear ya there." Keytar nodded. "Without a little change and chaos to stir things up, you got nothin' but dry and dull, stagnation, just not somethin' a person wants to be doin' with their life. Going the _other_ extreme is just as bad, though," he smirks, "Saw that enough with the crazy shapeshifting bastards of my own home."

"Oh yeah, they got those too," the bartender said. "They got these fucked up crazy Tolvurga who can turn into giant mutant wolves, nasty things. Don't wanna meet one o' them in a dark alley, or a light one for that matter."

"Yeah, hear ya there." Keytar grimaced, then lifted a brow. "Do they come out this way often to stir things up? Can't imagine they'd be willing to stay under their rock too long."

"Oh yeah, they come down here trying to recruit, or drag off victims, and they harass Kelen Tarnos and they even pester the kitties in the eastern tundra and the lizzies down south in the desert too, bet they prolly even bug the dwarves in the underground too. They can make these rifts in reality that let them get places fast, they just tear a hole like…"

The BSDs had had something along those lines, special passages that connected their Hives and other locations of value, but Keytar suspected the 'tender meant more in the way of stepping sideways. "What, they just vanish into thin air, kinda fade away and then reappear someplace else a while later?" he asked.

The man shook his head. "No, they just stick out a claw and like, literally rip a tear in reality, and there'll be this black rift there and they step through and it closes behind them…"

Hmm, okay, so that sounded more like the Rite that the Gurahl used for crossing into the Umbra, not that the 'black rift' description sounded particularly encouraging to check out what was on the other side… "Sound like some major pains in the tail," Keytar said.

"Oh yeah, you betta believe it," the barkeep said. "Lucky Seka, they don't bother 'em much cuz they can't get in there, Order field's too damn strong, but they sure do harry the lands closer to the Edge."

"And I don't suppose the nature of Chaos out this way supports the organization of a civil defense force or anything, huh?" Keytar smirked.

"Fuck yeah we fight when we have to," the barkeep said. "Taike's a democracy, we got a voluntary militia, nearly a quarter o' the city's in it too.'

Keytar chuckled, "Well that's good at least, I thought for a second there that maybe they came runnin' out of the hills and people fought em off as they were able."

"We got weapons, we got magic, they don't gen'rally get too many o' ours, but sometimes they just appear right in the middle o' town, and go nuts."

"Yeah, that's the problem with them movin' around like that," Keytar agreed, "Anyone know just what it is they're doin'? There should be some kinda way to set up an early-warning system or somethin'."

"No idear," the barkeep said. "Some sorta Chaos Magic, surely, they call the ability 'Void Rift', but I'll be damned if I know how it really works."

"Hmm, any mage-types in town or someone else who might know?" Keytar asked, not really sure _why_ he was doing it, but what the hell. The place seemed a decent enough town, might as well see if some of the nasties can't at least be belled.

"Mebbe," the barkeep said, shrugging. "They get defectors from time to time, an' sometimes we capture some of em, might check down at the dungeons and see."

Talk about your kinky spots to hang out! Keytar grinned at the thought but kept it to himself, instead asking, "Where would we find these dungeons?"

The barkeep gave some directions and said, "Somebody there might be able ta answer yer questions, if not they themselves, at least."

Keytar jotted the directions down mentally, then asked for a refill on his beer and took advantage of the re-direction to glance over at Rettah, grinned. "So whaddaya think, you up for some dungeon play?"

Rettah said, "Hmm, that sounds kinky." She drank some more beer brightly and chuckling softly.

Keytar nodded his thanks as his beer arrived, grinning as the 'tender ambled down the bar to serve another customer. Keytar looked back at her as he took a swallow. "Mm, call me curious. Been seein' a lot of weird things out this way, wouldn't mind gettin' an answer or two on just _what_ we've been seein'."

"No doubt," Rettah said. "This place ain't so bad. Feels a hell of a lot more welcoming than Seka, I'll say that much. Might be a bit of a mutant circus display, but a damn sight better than a Nazi picnic at least."

Keytar nodded in agreement, "Yeah, may be a freaktown, but you're not lookin' over your shoulder wonderin' when the thought police might be showin' up to crack down on illicit immoral thinking." he grinned at her.

Rettah drank her beer and said, "I wonder if there are any Tolvurga in town. Even of the relatively sane variety, for that matter."

"Maybe, definitely something to take a look at," Keytar replied, "Best bet may be seein' if one of em happened to end up in this dungeon." He shrugged and drank.

She finished up her beer and said, "Shall we check it out then? Worth a look if nothing else." She grinned innocently.

Keytar smirked, grabbed a handful of chips to munch on the way, "I bet," then headed for the door to check out how well the 'tender's instructions hold up.

Even though they seemed self-contradictory, they were in fact quite accurate. One could easily get lost in a town like this, where heading a block north, west, south, then east, did not bring you back to where you started. They did, however, find the dungeons. There weren't any guards or anything outside, but inside they saw an elf covered in hardened plate-like scales.

Getting lost would be damned easy, Keytar mused to himself, but it was no worse than the Umbra in some places and better than some others. He knew that if they bothered staying around long enough, they'd pick the logic out of the chaos quick enough. "Hiya," he nodded to the armored elf, "Was asking around about who might know a little about some of the, uhh, more interesting esoteric aspects goin' down in Keru countryside and got pointed this way. Think you can help us out a bit?"

"Yeah, we got us a pris'ner down in cell 2 from there, not in pretty shape though," the guard replied. "Got hurt bad and half regenerated wrong, he's a mess, ain't told us nothin' o' use neither."

"Mind if we go down and take a look?" Keytar asked.

"Yeah, go 'head if'n ya like, no tryin' anythin' funny though, place is warded to hell and back," the guard said.

Keytar grinned. "Hey, no worries, just lookin' for some information, not to end up as a guest here." He chuckled and headed back to find the cell in question. Rettah nodded and headed along back with him.

Down the stairs, the second cell down the corridor, they saw a large mutated wolf, green goo oozing out of half-healed wounds on his body, laying there in obvious pain and groaning and twitching a bit.

"Shit, that is _way_ too close to home," Keytar muttered, looking in at the thing that doesn't look too far gone from some of the creatures they'd recently fought up at the mountain caern.

Rettah frowned a bit as she looked over the beast. "Uh, yeah, no kidding. Definitely doesn't look too good either. I wonder what happened to him to do this?"

"Probably ran across something bigger and badder than it was and got its ass kicked." Keytar smirked, then spoke up, "Hey ugly, that about right?"

The creature groaned a bit and shifts so that he can look up at them with swirling violet eyes. "Leave me alone," he growled, curling up and closing his eyes again.

"Nah, no such luck sorry," Keytar chuckled, dropping down into a crouch and resting his arms on his thighs. "You're the mutant of the hour, got me all curious about Keru."

The wolfman groaned softly and sighed and looked up at them again. "What do you wish to know of the greatness of the City of Death?" he replied in a low snarl.

"Pfft, this isn't an interrogation," Keytar replied, "Why don't we start off with what brought you to this sorry state of affairs and go from there? Nice friendly little chat with me and Rettah here, how's that sound?"

Rettah chuckled softly and pulled up a nearby seat to look in at the creature.

"A nice little chat," the creature said dryly. "Fine. My name is Raksa. It was not these pathetic, snivelling beings of Taike who felled me, but one of the greats of True Chaos who found me unworthy, yet did not even have the courtesy to finish me off…"

"Really now?" Keytar looked skeptical. "Big, buff oozing fella like yourself, that had to be somethin' big and nasty indeed. So what're we talkin' about, a demonic Yo Quiero chihuahua or something?"

Raksa snorted. "What know you of the mighty Chaos Wyrms, their scales shimmering in many colors, their talons ever-ready to draw blood? Nothing, I'd presume, as if you had ever encountered one, it would have slain you!"

"Rrrrright, sounds like the Great Wyrms," Keytar replied, the image not particularly reassuring since there were all of six of the suckers back home and they were _nasty_ … good thing they'd cut a deal with the Garou along the way! "So what'd you do to piss off tall, dark and scaly?"

"I refused to do what he asked of me," Raksa snarled. "A suicide, it surely was, but no more so than refusal! Still I would not, regardless. They must not think that we will gladly do all they ask without a word or thought for ourselves!"

"Interesting…" Keytar looked at the creature in vague surprise, "And what was it that it asked and you didn't want to do?"

"He wished me to traverse the Fields of Chaos, to locate a place that he had some interest in. Dresa Sirapir, he called it. Home of Magic-People, it means. He wanted to find out about something called a Nexus…"

Keytar smirked, not surprised to hear about _that_ , the Nexus was an incredibly useful tool and potentially very dangerous in the wrong hands. He'd definitely consider these guys to be the wrong ones. "So why did you refuse?" he asked, "Doesn't sound too terribly dangerous offhand."

"Oh, he thought I knew nothing of Torn Elkandu, as the people there call it. No, I have heard rumor of the place. There are those there who are very powerful, who could create and destroy entire worlds with a wave of their hand. The Creator of our own world is associated with there. And Zuna Taike, the one who destroyed our world, Pattern and Chaos alike…"

Keytar chuckled, "Still doesn't explain why you didn't just say 'hey! Sounds like a great idea, count me in!', or something along those lines."

Raksa chuckled faintly. "Why I would risk the wrath of the mighty Chaos Wyrm Keriex over it? Suicide it would be, not only for myself but for all of us. They would know about us then, and they would come to destroy us, to finally wipe all traces of Chaos from this world…"

Keytar rather doubted that, considering what he'd heard of the Elkandu, and it wasn't like there weren't people who knew about it already there… but he wasn't about to enlighten this mutant psycho over it. "Makes sense," he replied, "Sacrifice yourself for the greater good, or evil, whatever the case may be, rather than obeying and bringing the hammer down on everyone."

"And they say that there are those of the Elkandu who can destroy even a person's soul," Raksa said. "No, I will not risk that."

"So you defied this thing, it trashed and dumped you, and they found and locked you up," Keytar listed off the apparent string of events, "That sound about right?"

"Something like that," Raksa replied, smirking. "I know not how much longer I shall live in this pit, likely he just found one of less will to do it instead, so what point?"

"Yep, probably so, but I doubt things will turn out quite as well as he might hope," Keytar smirked. "Or as badly as you feared. The people there are, mm, interesting to say the least." he shrugs, "Anyway."

"No, I do not think any good will come of it," Raksa said. "I would have gone away, far away, but I was wounded and the Taikir found me and brought me here and locked me up…"

"Uh-huh," Keytar mused, looking at the creature. Didn't seem totally batshit insane, that was a definite plus, and appeared to be honest enough about wanting to get away from it all. Hmm.

"Meh. Fuck them, I say," Raksa muttered. "Fuck them all, the Taikir too for not even bothering to send down a healer. Pfah. I'd've told em whatever they wanted, but now i'm just going to sit here dying slowly."

"Heh, don't be so hasty there." Keytar smirked. "Wouldn't want to give your ol' scaly friend the satisfaction, now would ya?" Crazy idea, really, but he'd been doing some odd things lately anyway, what was one more?

"Not planning on dying anytime soon if I can help it, don't know if that's but inevitable now though," Raksa replied.

"Bah, you're sounding like a damned angsty leech," Keytar retorted, "But say you _did_ get out of here, would you be willin' to pass along a little info to the people that just might be interested in hearin' about your little worm's plans? Seem to remember hearin' something about someone named Keolah regardin' this place, shouldn't be too tough to track down with the right tools." Eyes of Truth would be good for that…

"Yes, I would, certainly," Raksa said, looking up a little more hopefully. "Provided I'm not going to get killed or tortured or anything."

Keytar smirked. "I sure as hell don't plan on it, can't make any promises beyond that though. You tell me you'll do it and I'll see about gettin' you outta here and to a healer. Deal?"

Raksa gave a nod and said, "Very well. I will do it."

"Now don't go anywhere." Keytar smirked and stood. "Be right back." Then headed off to find the guard.

Raksa made no comment about the fact that he wasn't likely to be trying to go anywhere from the inside of a locked and warded cell, but just sat there.

The warden looked up at Keytar as he came back up the stairs and said, "Well, did ya find out anythin' by chance?"

"A few things." Keytar nodded. "Most notably that there's gonna be a hell of a lot of trouble runnin' around if I don't take that ugly sonofafurball back to warn someone about things that might happen. So, what're the odds of getting him out of there?"

The warden frowned distrustfully. "What you wanna let out that crazy bastard for? He's a Chaos Tolvurga!"

"Two reasons." Keytar ticked off a finger. "First, if I _don't_ get him back alive and the information he's _freely_ offered in exchange for healing, there's gonna be hell to pay crashin' all over this crazy place. Believe it. Second," he grinned and pulled a T-1000, shifting his arm into a silvery reflective blade, "He's sure not gettin' away, so you save yourself on cleaning up a corpse."

The warden clearly didn't trust him much, but sighed and said, "Fine. Do what you like, long as he ain't bothering here no more." He climbed down the stairs and opened the cell in question.

Keytar grinned at the elf, then shook his hand out when the man turned away, making a face. Fuck that HURT! How the hell did Hamilton deal with turnin' into silver like that? Shiiiiit. He shook his head and went down to the cells, folding his arms to look in at the mutant as the warden unlocked and unsealed the place.

"Fine, go on, take 'im and git outta here, but I ain't callin' in no healer for the bastid," the warden said, climbing back up the stairs.

Keytar checked to see if it was just the cells that were warded or the entire area, it'd be convenient to just take the Nexus out of here rather than dragging this sucker dripping ooze all the way. Only the cells were heavily warded enough to stop someone from Recalling out, although it seemed that it would be very hard to teleport _in_. Seems an odd way to do it, although most likely it was intended to prevent rescue missions.

"Awright, can you walk, or are you gonna bleed all over me while I carry you?" Keytar smirked at the mutant wolf.

Raksa struggled to his feet, managing to walk, at least on all fours and with considerable pain. "I can walk," he said in a strained voice as he slowly came out of the cell.

"Right, then let's use that little thing you didn't want to go looking for and get you to a healer, shall we?" Keytar said, glanced over at Rettah and smirked, "Oh the company we keep." then Recalled with the furball.


	7. Plots of the Wyrm

Raksa looked around with concern as they appeared in the Nexus, rather hoping that Keytar kept his word about that. The hospital in Torn Elkandu was located on Soul's Road not far from the Nexus.

"C'mon scruffy, hospital's over this way," Keytar motioned in that direction, "Should get you patched up in no time." Where was a Theurge when ya needed one anyway? He headed to lead the way over.

Raksa stared at their surroundings, the assortment of beings there odd even for one used to Chaos.

Down in the hospital, they saw a dark-haired elf in a white robe looking over a terminal at a desk. "Oh my," she said when they come in, coming over toward them to examine the obviously-hurt Tolvurga.

"I've been asked to request the treatment that doesn't include branding irons, nail-pulling, the boot, or any other torture method," Keytar remarked blandly.

The elf looked at him with some horror and says as she got the Tolvurga onto a table, "Oh, I wouldn't do anything like that. I'm Kirlin Starfire, just a healer. I'd never hurt anyone like that. Oh my, this looks infected pretty badly…"

Keytar just smirked at the woman, the sarcasm had been thick enough to cut with a laser torch and she'd still missed it. Sheesh. He went along with them, just to make sure and keep an eye on Raksa, and would offer a hand as needed. Rettah headed along after, peering at the wounded wolf. Kirlin pulled out a round piece of hematite which glowed, as did her hands, as she waved them over the Tolvurga. After several long minutes, his wounds slowly sealed up and he looked considerably better. Despite the freakishness of the creature, Keytar was glad to see that. There wasn't any excuse for them just having tossed Raksa down there with wounds like that! He would have just killed the creature quickly, save a lot of suffering all around.

Kirlin didn't even seem to notice that she was healing a freakish mutant werewolf. "There you go, all better. Do come back and let me know if you feel any infection start to come back, but I think I got it all."

Raksa climbed to his feet experimentally, stretching a bit before shifting into human — well, elf apparently — form. Black hair, somewhat splotchy skin, and swirling violet eyes. "You have my thanks, my dear Kirlin," he said.

Keytar didn't comment, biting down on a smirk, and thought a bit about the best way to go about finding someone… or even who might be interested in dealing with the potential problem. He doubted that they'd be wanting to see these things running loose all through the worlds available through the Nexus, the question would we whether anyone would do anything about it or not.

Raksa went up to Keytar and said, "Very well. I appear to be much better now thanks to our dear friend Kirlin here. LIkewise I am quite grateful to be away from the city of Taike, although damned if I know if this is an improvement…" He smirked. "I'll just assume yes for the moment, who did you wish me to talk to?"

"Well let's head back to the Nexus and we'll check on where they can be found," Keytar replied, nodded and smiled to Kirlin, "Thanks much for the assist." then headed back that way to transport up to the Eyes of Truth and see if it could locate Keolah as it had Suzcecoz.

Coming back up there and onto the bridge toward the nearest terminal, doing a search… The computer proceeded to helpfully say, "Unable to locate Keolah Kedaire."

Raksa stared around the bridge at the redshirts who were, for some reason, apparently playing the Sims on the main viewscreen.

"That's about right," Keytar muttered with a smirk, "Tempted to just turn him over to Shazmar and see what the elf twit has to say about things."

"Wait, Keolah?" Raksa said, raising an eyebrow. " _The_ Keolah? The great Creator of my world?"

"Yeah, that one," Keytar hmmed, shrugged and typed in a query for Suczecoz since she'd probably have some sort of interest in seeing that the particular brand of Chaos in that world didn't end up spreading.

About instantly, there came a text-only reply that she was listening. Rettah smirked a bit as she peered over his shoulder at seeing that.

Raksa wondered why the male Sim just gave birth to a green-skinned baby.

Keytar rolled his eyes and looked over at Raksa, "Right, let's go over here and you can repeat what you told me earlier along with whatever else you can think of that might be useful to know in keeping this wormfood pal from breaking loose." He headed for the ready room.

Raksa pulled himself away from the very bizarre scenario on the screen — Not that a baby might have green skin, but that a _man_ might give birth. How weird! Rettah smirked and ed with. The room was very quiet relatively speaking, with no crying alien babies.

"Right, have a seat or something," Keytar said, waving at the nearby chairs and picking one out for himself, "And like I said, start from the top, we're recording this for posterity."

"Alright," Raksa said, sighing and taking a seat and looking at all the odd contraptions about the room. He began to go into detailed descriptions of what the Keruir did, what they were planning to do, what they'd wanted him to do, and what they'd do if they succeeded. Apparently they weren't even stupid enough to try anything blatant or direct… They were intending to go through using the Nexus quietly, slipping off agents into other worlds, starting up cults there, doing their very pleasant things…

Yeah, about what Keytar hadn't hoped for, someone more along the lines of the last crazy bastard they'd finally managed to track down back home. Delightful. He could only hope that Suzy was not only listening but has a way to lock the bastards _out_ of using the thing!

When Raksa had finished, text came up on the screen stating, "My records indicate that several of them have already been through the Nexus. It is difficult to flatly disallow through a being based off physical or spiritual characteristics, as such does not always relegate their intentions. Nor is it really my place to mentally scan them and ensure that they are not doing anything potentially harmful. However, feel free to use the tools and information I have made available to you here in order to track them down yourselves if that is your desire."

"Wait just a damned second," Keytar muttered scowling at the message, "What about something like locking it down based on this screwy offshoot power they're using? It can't be that tough to figure out the… I dunno, Ethereal frequency or some crap to filter requests from anyone using it out!"

"They are using standard Void Magic," the text replied. "It is not so easy as you believe to pick out a particular 'flavor' of Void Magic, since even though they would be shocked and horrified to realize it, both the pattern elves and the chaos elves are tapping into the same power."

Keytar smirked. "Greeeeat, and tossing out a traceroute… bah, forget it." He muttered and stood up, "So much for that."

Rettah said, "Why're you taking it to Suzcecoz, anyway? She just builds stuff, she doesn't generally seem to care what people do with it… Not even sure if Keolah would care either, she'd just end up giving some big speech about free will. Scregor? Hawthorne? They might."

Keytar shrugged. "You go with what you know or know of first, though it's not really surprising." He rolled his eyes in disgust and mutters a string of obscenities that were probably best left undetailed. "Fine, so we find one of these two, pass along this story _again_ and turn it over to them."

"Well, hey, at least we've got a recording so we don't have to repeat it again," she said, grinning and grabbing a datapad with the recording of it. "I didn't see Scregor on the bridge, but he must be around somewhere. Let's ask the computer."

Keytar did so and waited for it to provide a location and directions, either that or get a monkey wrench tuneup.

"Scregor is on deck 12. Hawthorne Chelseer is on Holodeck 3," replied the computer happily.

Rettah said, "Holodecks? Oh dear…"

"They make nifty training simulators," Keytar chuckled and headed off to try Hawthorne first, having flipped a mental coin for the choice.

The lift took them off down near Holodeck 3, and stepping inside, they found that Hawthorne was apparently cutting apart various likenesses of Jar Jar Binks, Martha Stewart, and Barney, with a sword.

Keytar had to snicker at that, even a century later the damned things wouldn't _go away_. He shrugged and idly called over, "Uhh, whenever you're done saving the universe from holographic horror, could I talk with ya a minute?"

Hawthorne finished bisecting a giant floating head of George W. Bush, and said, "Sure, what's up?" She made the blood and corpses vanish.

"Just a potential problem that's…" Keytar started snarkily, then growled, shook his head, and changed tracks, "Anyway, looks like there's some potential trouble runnin' around, we have a recording to explain it." He motioned to Rettah.

Rettah handed over the datapad, and Hawthorne read over the recording. "Well, shit. Some crazy fucked up nutcases to kill? Where do we start?" She grinned eagerly, brandishing her sword.

Keytar smirked. "Right. Apparently there were some tools left behind to track them down, I'm sure they'll prove quite useful for you."

"Just point me at em and I'll hack em to pieces," Hawthorne said, waving around her weapon. "This here is the Zarnith, the most powerful magic sword known to the Elkandu."

Keytar chuckled, "The computer should be aware of what's needed to track them," it _should_ be considering Suzy'd replied through it, he muttered to himself, "We'll leave ya to starting that while we go talk to Scregor. I don't think this'll be a one person job."

"Righto," Hawthorne said, giving a clumsy salute and heading off, sword in hand.

Rettah snickered softly once she'd gone and said, "Yeeah…"

Raksa just let himself get dragged along quietly looking at everything.

Keytar shook his head and went back toward the nearest lift to make the way toward Scregor, "An Ahroun by any other name…"

"That's Hawthorne for you," she said.

Scregor had apparently moved up to deck 2 while they were talking to Hawthorne, and they found him there in the mess hall eating after reorienting on their directions.

Scregor he'd at least encountered before, and Keytar smiled faintly as he approached and nodded in greeting, "Hope we're not catching ya at too bad a time…"

"Ah, not at all, please, grab a bite to eat and we can talk if you like." Scregor gestured vaguely toward the replicator and the chairs as he munched on some ham.

Keytar resisted the urge to order tea, Earl Grey, though snickered as he called up a burger, fries, and a beer for himself, set it aside and looked at Raksa, "You hungry?"

Raksa peered at the strange device which seemed to have conjured things out of thin air and blinked at the question and said, "Oh. Yeah, I guess so."

Rettah replicated herself a beer and sat down, pilfering one of his fries.

Keytar chuckled lightly, "Just tell it what you want, badda-boom, badda-bing, there ya go." He grabbed his food and goes over to sit beside Rettah, took a long drink of his beer before offering her another of his fries with a quirked grin. Rettah munched it out of his hand with a grin back.

Raksa looked at the odd wall slot and said, "Meat."

The computer replied, "Please specify."

Raksa said, "Um… Cooked meat?"

The computer replied, "Please specify type of meat and method of cooking."

Raksa said, "Uh…"

Keytar smirked and rolled his eyes, gets back up and went over to the replicator. "Steak, grilled, well done," he said, then goes back to the table with the surety that the weird wolf could figure out what to do with the food itself. 

Raksa took it over and sat down, picked up the steak in both hands and tore off a piece of it with his teeth. Rettah and Scregor just looked at him oddly smirking.

Didn't even cause Keytar a blink, he was clearly already assuming that the guy's the equivalent of a lupus and that certain allowances would have to be made until they went their separate ways. "Soooo anyway," he cleared his throat lightly, "There's something you might be interested in, some trouble brewing," he motioned to Rettah for the recording.

Rettah handed it over and Scregor took a look over it, frowning. "Hmm, yes, this could be most serious indeed. Though I believe Lezaria and Torn Elkandu at the least will be alert for any signs of new Chaos cults springing up after the recent incursions."

"If they work anything like elsewhere," Keytar said, "There mignt not be any clear sign that anything's wrong until they come boilin' out of the freakin' air. Sounds like they intend the sneaky route."

"We must strike quickly and root out the infection before it has a chance to fester," Scregor said, punctuating his words with sharp movements of his fork.

"Pretty much what I was thinkin'," Keytar agreed, "I'll be passin' word back to my own home, though I can guarantee they're used to this kinda crap from long, long ago."

Raksa finished messily eating his steak and said, "At least they should only have had a week, tops, to get their claws into things… That's about how long I was stuck in there…"

"And that's barely enough time to do some scouting around," Keytar said, then smirked at Raksa, "Especially if all of 'em are a little backwards."

"Wha?" Raksa said in puzzlement, licking the steak juices off his fingers.

Rettah politely tried to refrain from snickering at him, with marginal success.

"Rrright," Keytar said, "Anyway, you pulled your end of the deal, now you can figure out where you want to go from here." 

"I… have no idea," Raksa said, looking at the tabletop. "I obviously can't go home, or anywhere else in that world as they would find me and hunt me down… but I don't know where else to go either."

"So take a look around, see what's out there," Keytar replied, "There's bound to be plenty of places that they haven't gotten around to poking their twisted muzzles into yet that would appeal."

"This place… this place is strange… I can hardly feel the song of Chaos here at all… No more than the faintest whisper…"

"Not surprising, considering where you are," Keytar replied, "The person who designed and made this ship is somewhat high on the Order ladder," he smirked, "There should be other places more to your liking though."

"I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing…" Raksa murmured. "It neither feels nearly so oppressive as the Pattern of Seka, either… Very strange…"

Keytar shrugged, took a bite of his burger and chewed before replying, "There's more balance out there in most places, some a little more toward either side. All depends what you're looking for."

"And these are the sorts of places they seek to bring their torment and destruction?" Raksa said. He went to the replicator and said, "Water." At least it didn't ask for specifics on that, just replicating him a glass of cold water, which he drank.

"Mmyep, ain't it grand to be part of a grand and ever-lovin' cause?" Keytar smirked. "Smarter to run the hell away and find someplace quiet to chill out in."

"If they're using the Nexus they still might find me," Raksa, then thought a moment. "But for all they know I'm dead anyway…"

Keytar thought a minute as he munched, trying to remember something he'd heard said once, where, who, and just why the hell it was bugging him at the moment. Then it hit him and he gulped down the latest bite and grinned a bit. "Y'know, there's an old story someone told me once, about a BSD who went Ronin and ended up on the run from his own kind… well, turns out there were a couple people willing to help him out."

Raksa raised an eyebrow, drinking his water, and said, "What's a BSD? What's a Ronin? And what?"

Keytar chuckled lightly, "Black Spiral Dancers, they were a tribe that went major off the deep end among my own people, total wacky, mutant nutcases. Anyway, this guy… Duncan, I think his name was, he went Ronin, which meant he'd had _enough_ of their crap and struck out on his own. Needless to say, they weren't the types inclined to let bygones be bygones and hunted him down eventually." He smirked and shrugged. "That's kinda beside the point. See, the BSDs were very much enemies of the rest of my people, and they tended to get killed on sight… but there were a couple people that gave him a chance to prove that he wasn't still on that side. Malcolm and Trigger."

"I see…" Raksa, draining his water glass. "So what should I do then? What would I have to do?"

"I'd say go talk to one of em," Keytar said, "Trigger's in Torn Elkandu at the moment, so he's probably your best bet." Not to mention that Malcolm was getting on a bit in years… he pauses mid-bite of his burger at the thought and makes a note to have a talk with him sometime about maybe getting a little upgrade.

Raksa nodded a bit and said, "Very well. I shall travel to Torn Elkandu and attempt to locate this 'Trigger' then, I suppose…" He clearly hadn't expected to even end up in this situation. By all rights he figured he should be dead or imprisoned by now.

"He apparently has a little business going down on Soul's Road," Keytar chuckled, "Just one word of warning, well two. First, he's a leech, so if ya got a problem with that you may wanna try elsewhere. Second, he's a crotchety ol' son, so he's just a barrel of laughs."

"What do you mean by 'leech'?" Raksa said, raising an eyebrow in puzzlement.

Keytar smirked. "Vampires, whatever ya wanna call em. It's a term we use for em, you'll probably end up hearing more variants if you deal with him.

"Can't say I ever heard of them, myself," Raksa said, shrugging. Little did he realize that his world was created by one.

"Then the only thing you'd have to worry about is whether or not you can deal with his, umm, unique personality." Keytar smirked. "Lemme put it this way, he got along just fine with the Ahrouns back home, the ones who prefer to go out and beat things up."

"I see. I think I can handle that." Raksa smirked faintly.

Keytar shrugged, "Anyway, that's an option for ya, another would be to stay aboard here and catch up on the tech side of things a bit. Yet another would be to take the Nexus and just… go someplace."

"Very well. I must thank you for allowing me this opportunity and helping me out of that place," Raksa said, climbing to his feet with a sigh. Well, he might not know what silverware was for, but at least he knew what clothing is…

"Nah, I just opened the door, _you_ walked through it," Keytar chuckled. "Good luck stayin' out of the way of the insane nutballs."

Raksa headed off.

Rettah watched him go quietly and said, "Is it just me, or does he seem kind of, sane?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Keytar replied, "It's hard to tell sometimes, even the craziest bastard can be mostly functional on a day-to-day basis, then BAM! Total axe-murderer. But…" he shrugged, "Those two have dealt with that sorta thing before, he gets a seal of approval _there_ , and he's good to go." Of course if he _didn't_ , there wouldn't be any worrying about him anyway.

"Think he's gonna go off and find them?" Rettah said

Scregor had about finished his large plate of ham by this point, belching as he washed it down with ale.

"That or go wandering off on his own someplace," Keytar shrugged. "Didn't seem like he was all rearin' to go runnin' right back to where he started." He smirked. "Clearly not a masochist at least."

Scregor said, "As for me, I am more than ready to go smite some evildoers and cleanse their scum from the universe."

Keytar chuckled, took a sip of his beer, "Mm, Suzcecoz left a message saying she'd laid some tools about for tracking them down, I'm sure the computer can tell ya where to begin. Probably get an idea where Hawthorne started off at too, so you don't double-work the same leads."

"I shall be certain to seek out such knowledge and bring about an end to their dire plans. Good luck to you." Scregor climbed to his feet and headed for the lift.

Keytar smiled and waved as the dwarf headed off, then muttered into his beer, "And if she thinks I'm goin' BSD hunting she's out of her mind."

Rettah stretched and replicated another beer and looks out the window at the image of Lezaria slowly turning below. "Between those two, I don't doubt that these nuts will be paste before you know it. So, where to next?"

Keytar got up to go took a look out the window, smirked as he drank the last of his beer and gestured out to the planet below, "Y'know, I didn't expect to see a view like that, this whole ship is hilarious." He chuckled, "As for next, I say we stay the hell away from the Pattern Realm for a bit, let the problem work itself out."

"Yeah, good idea," she said. "So, let's see, maybe not the Abyss, but perhaps the next best thing. How about Mezulbryst?"

Keytar laughed, "You just know all the bright nightspots, don't ya babe? Isn't that where they were sayin' there were all the leeches, demons, and whatever else? Y'know, rivers of blood and lava, that kinda thing?"

"Yup, that's the place," Rettah replied brightly. "What do you say we give it a visit eh?

Keytar snickered and shook his head, "I'd swear you were just _tryin'_ to find trouble. Okay, let's do it." He cleaned up after himself, then Recalled to the Nexus.

Rettah did likewise, and put in the coordinates for outside of Iron City. "Hope you don't mind a little rain," she said as she activated the Nexus, setting them down around a hundred feet away from the gates to a very dark, metallic, and stormy city.

Keytar smirked and did a minor shift to a raincoat over his suit, "Nah, I don't mind a little rain, reminds me of an old musical though so you'd better watch out."

"Iron City is one of the places in the universe where meteorologists don't have much to do. It's _always_ raining. Literally. If it ever stops raining here, it's a sure sign something ain't right." She headed in toward the gates.

There was a snoozing guard leaned up against the wall next to the gate, and the iron gates stood half-open.

"Gene Kelly woulda loved the place," Keytar chuckled, dipping his hands into his pockets as he strolled casually past the somnolent guard with a smirk and ducked through the gate to take a look around.

Sure enough, the place appeared to be populated by humans, drow, various types of demons flitting and shambling about, vampires, and the occasional representative of more random species. Although the buildings appear to be metallic, they show no signs of corrosion due to the constant rain, most likely they weren't actually iron but some sort of metal that wasn't affected by the weather.

"I expected more rust," Keytar commented lightly, not really all that surprised considering the things he'd seen in the past and more recently around here, but still a curiosity.

"And naturally this excursion will require a careful examination of the nearest bar. Damn, you'd think I'm becoming an alcoholic or something," Rettah commented lightly as she headed for a bar.

Keytar chuckled as he trailed after her, "I'd only worry about it if you started downing bloodwine, or worse yet some Fianna homebrew. Now _that_ stuff has some kick."

Rettah snickered softly. "No, no, I'll leave the consumption of blood to bloodsuckers thanks." She headed inside.

The bartender here appeared to be a small winged imp.

Keytar glanced at the 'tender, mutters softly for Rettah's ears alone as they approached, "I bet he gets used as a football a lot."

Rettah snickered quietly.

The imp looked them over, in particular Keytar's attire, and said, "Outsiders eh? Name your poison."

Keytar took off his coat the easy way, returning it to his suit, and drew a pair of shades out to slip over his eyes. "How'd ya guess?" he smirked, "Beer for me, unless there's a local special you'd suggest."

Rettah dittoed that.

"We got more kinds of alcohol in Iron City than you can wag a hellhound's tail at," the imp replied, flicking a claw and telekinetically pouring them a couple beers.

"In that case, mix me up a Boilermaker for a chaser," Keytar grinned. "Can't argue with a policy of keeping plenty of alcohol around."

"Sure thing," the imp replied. "So what brings you folks to Iron City? Tourism eh? Lookin' to catch the perpetual nightlife?"

"Oh yeah, heard this place was a million laughs, just had to drop in," Keytar chuckled and took a drink, "Mm, doesn't look _too_ bad so far, long as you don't mind some rain and ya mind your own business."

"Yeah, just don't let anyone suck out all your blood, or your soul, or chain to eternal servitude, or sell you insurance…" the imp commented.

Rettah snickered softly, drinking her beer.

Keytar smirked, "Hey, as long as it's not the lawyers that go door-to-door over this way, pretty sure I won't have to hang the tag of 'ultimate evil' on the town."

"Oh, nah, the lawyers moved out once Darkhammer got waxed," the imp said. "Ain't nobody tryin' that gig around here no more. And the telemarketers all got sent to Stygia."

"Well that takes care of most of the bloodsuckers right there," Keytar snickered, then grinned. "As for the other type, they're generally too busy angsting or hittin' goth clubs to worry about, and I wouldn't touch one a those places with a wire-guided missile."


	8. Claw and Fang

Before heading off, Raksa spent a little time looking up some things on the strange, fascinating machines on the Eyes of Truth. Then he headed down to Torn Elkandu and took a stroll down Soul's Road, looking for the building in particular and heading in thoughtfully.

There was a young black vampire sitting at the reception desk as Raksa entered, eyes shifting away from the screen of the computer he'd been studying at to study the new arrival narrowly. Odd looking for back in the World of Darkness, he thought to himself, but pretty ordinary for here. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Hello," Raksa said a little nervously. "I'm looking for somebody named 'Trigger', I was told I could find him here?"

The vampire's eyes narrowed slightly as he took another look at Raksa, checking out his aura and picking up the brighter hues of a shapeshifter… made sense, they were the only ones who called his Sire that. He shrugged mentally, "Just a minute," he said and tapped a key at the computer, waited only a few seconds, then looked over, "Head on back, down the hall, take a right, last door," and he returned to his studies.

Raksa said, "Thank you…" and headed back there, following the directions and heading into the room specified.

Falk looked over as the stranger entered, set a strange tool down on the counter he'd been working on some device at. He'd taken to spending _some_ time in the office lately at least, so he'd put in a few things so he can keep working on one experiment or another, and he motions to a chair, "Have a seat… and don't tell me you're Garou." he smirked.

"No, I'm Tolvurga," he said. "My name is Raksa." He took a seat. "I was directed toward you by two people who recently visited my homeworld, by the names of Keytar and Rettah." That had been one of the things he'd looked up… it helped to know who you were dealing with.

Falk knew Keytar at least, a quick memory check tagging him as a low-to-middling rank Glass Walker, and he nodded as he headed over to his desk and settled into the high-backed chair behind it. "Okay, so what brings you here?" he asked, then made a gesture to activate a series of protective and privacy measures which even someone without any sensitivity would feel the weight of, "Speak freely, we're in the clear."

They also wouldn't be passing any time in the real, but Falk didn't mention that.

"I am a … well, former… member of a tribe of Tolvurga who Keytar compared to ones from his own world called the 'Black Spiral Dancers'… They seem to be planning on some sneaky plans involving using the Nexus to quietly infiltrate other worlds and set up cults…"

Falk's eyes narrow as he looked at Raksa, pale blue eyes cold as liquid nitrogen as he considers what had just been said. There was only one thing he hated more than most leeches, and that was the BSDs. He'd thought they'd all been hunted into extinction until they started popping up again lately like psychotic daisies… He had a special reason for that hatred, having to do with his sister becoming one some time ago. Needless to say, she wasn't around anymore.

"Mmkay," Falk replied, breaking the flicker of reverie, "So these assholes are going to start causing trouble, I can look into that. What are _you_ doing here?" He smirked thinly, "Your old assbuds not doing it for you anymore?"

"One of the three great Chaos Wyrms had ordered me to go to the Nexus and do some scouting around. I refused, and he attacked me and left me grievously wounded near the city of Taike. The Taikir took me and threw me in a dungeon without any healing and left me to rot for over a week before Keytar and Rettah found me. Fuck them. I don't want anything to do with them anymore."

At least the guy was telling the truth at this moment, Falk knew, he'd gotten real good at spotting the subtleties of aura and body language that red-flagged a lie… didn't mean that wouldn't change in the future, but if the guy was willing to walk away and stick with it he wasn't a total waste of space. "Smartest fucking thing you could have done," Falk replied, "Better dead than dealing with those assholes. So what does that mean for your future, and why does it bring you to me, hmm?"

"Don't really know," Raksa said. "We got Scregor and Hawthorne off hunting them down, but Suzcecoz said several of them had gone through already, which could mean a lot more than several if they've been using their Void Rift ability to bring in more. I'd like to hope they haven't had a chance to do much yet, but I know them and they tend not to wait around much when they get an idea…"

"Uh-huh, and what's this 'Void Rift' ability?" Falk asked.

"It lets them tear a hole in reality to travel directly to wherever they want," Raksa said. "Opens a portal that can let through entire armies if they want."

"Mm," Falk replied, examining Raksa's aura analytically. "Probably talking Dream or Void, then, though with the 'whole armies' thing we're likely looking at Void. That's not fucking good, all someone has to do is get someplace once and they can go back there at a whim. Hmm."

Raksa nodded in agreement. "They've been using it to harry the edges of my world, the Pattern Realm it's called, for some time, out from their base in Keru beyond the Edge of the World, within the Fields of Chaos. But they can't get into the mid-part of the realm, around the area of Seka, because the pattern field there is too strong."

"Really now?" Falk lifted a brow, "Now that's an interesting point, maybe something to look into acquiring a little more information on. If these assholes are planning to go fucking around the different universes, it'd be good to have the specific tools to ruin their day."

"Most of the beings in the Pattern Realm emit a 'pattern aura'," Raksa said. "Except, of course, the ones who are associated with Chaos rather than Order. Even the Tolvurga there, the Tolvurga of the Pattern can't shapeshift, because of it I suppose. But where it's strongest, in Seka, nobody can shapeshift at all, nor use any sort of Chaos magic."

Falk smiled thinly, an idea of dealing with the problem on a long-term basis rising in his mind. "Yeah, I think a trip to this Seka's in order." He stood up, snagged his trenchcoat, "You coming with, or got someplace else to be?"

"It would not be high on my list of places I'd like to go," Raksa murmured. "But I will go there."

"Think of it this way," Falk replied, moving around the office to collect a few things and put them in his pockets, "If what I'm thinking of works out, you won't have to worry about these fucks popping out of thin air to harass your ass."

Raksa grunted softly. "They probably think I'm dead. Regardless…" Raksa sighed. "Fuck them. I'd like to see their damned plans stopped one way or another."

Falk headed for the door, "First rule of survival: Never assume. They _might_ think you're dead, but if someone was pissed off enough to fuck you up like that, then they just might be curious enough to check and make sure of it. I know I would."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "Very well." He stood and followed after him. He clearly didn't really want to go there, but he would anyway for some reason or another.

Falk didn't really care about the other's motives at this point, he was willing to give the shapeshifter a chance but that's as far as it went. He waved at his childe in the lobby in passing and continued on to the Nexus to snag the coordinates for this 'Pattern Realm' and see about transporting over there. The coordinates available set them down just outside the city of Seka.

Even outside the city, Raksa immediately looked uncomfortable, as he glanced around at the symmetrical trees and the unnaturally perfect architecture. "I'd never anticipated before coming into the heart of the Pattern Realm," he said quietly.

"Just don't step on anyone's toes, you'll be fine," Falk replied absently, the appearance of the surroundings not making much difference to him but the _magic_ in place, now that was interesting. He strolled casually toward the gates of the city, his senses tuned to deciphering exactly what was going on in the metaphysical arena.

Raksa followed him in, wincing visibly as they crossed the threshold of the dome over the city. This place clearly made him not only very uneasy but clearly in pain as well. The pattern elves took only a glance toward Falk, but their eyes fixated on Raksa, immediately recognizing him as a chaos elf.

"Get used to it," Falk said to Raksa, "If what I'm thinking of works out, you'll be feeling it a lot more soon. C'mon let's see if we can't find someone to explain a little more about how things are working around here." He headed over for one of the elves, paying no attention to the stares they were giving Raksa. "Hey, question for you."

The pattern elf stared in alarm at Raksa and looked toward Falk, mouth still hanging open.

Raksa closed his eyes and swayed back and forth, trying to ignore the feeling that his skin was crawling, that the pattern of Seka was trying to wipe every last trace of Chaos from his mind, body, and soul. It was disorienting to say the least.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Falk muttered and went to toss an illusion over Raksa to make him look like any of the other elves here, including manipulating the appearance of his aura.

The pattern elf only relaxes slightly, having clearly seen what he appeared to be before, but didn't say anything. "What?…"

Falk would tweak the illusion as he talked to the elf. "I'm looking for someone who might know a bit about the magic field that's hanging around this place. There a mage in town that deals with it?"

"There's a Pattern Mage in the Tower of Magic by the name of Felamais you could talk to…" the elf said nervously. "He could probably tell you whatever you want to know, if you are not here with ill intent…"

If he were here with ill intent someone would be dead already, Falk smirked. "Where's the Tower of Magic?"

The elf pointed toward one of the towers, a tall, spindly construction with wide balconies at evenly spaced intervals going completely around the spire. "You might find him up there somewhere."

"Right, thanks," Falk replied briefly and turned to stride off in that direction. He kept a surreptitious eye on Raksa to see how he was doing, but otherwise tuned his senses to studying the mystical phenomenon of the area.

Raksa headed off after quietly, twitching slightly but not saying anything. He didn't know what this might be doing to him. The tower's sliding doors opened when they approached, allowing entry into a very stark and pristine lobby. An elevator stood to one side of the room, beside it a helpful index listing what is on each floor. Falk headed over to take a look at the directory to find this Felamais, and will set off to find them as soon as a location was defined. It lists "Felamais - Master Patterner" on the 40th floor.

Raksa stepped inside the elevator and as it started to climb he said, "This place… I think it's doing something to me, or trying to…"

Falk looked him over with a critical eye. "Interesting, very interesting. This idea may be more useful than I thought."

"Feel like it's trying to rearrange my insides, trying to shove my mind into little boxes…" Raksa murmured, shuddering involuntarily. "There's a reason why we — they — ugh… don't come here…"

"That's what happens when you let something get too strong a hold of you, rather than controlling it," Falk replied. "It's a fucking tool, nothing more or less, and you're going to have to learn to use it properly if you don't want your hide on somebody's wall."

Raksa gave a short nod as they arrived on the 40th floor. There was a hallway leading off with some rooms on the side, each labeled with such oblique descriptions as "Runic Transfer Chamber" and "Pattern Communication Relay". At the end of the hall, there was an office labeled "Felamais, Master Patterner". 'Looks like we're here' would be a really fucking stupid thing that people would say at this point, Falk rolled his eyes unseen behind his shades and decided to forego that as he strode down the hall and knocked on the door at the end.

The door slid open on its own to reveal a neatly organized office containing a desk and a male pattern elf wearing white robes sewn with runes. Though unlike most of the others in this city, his hair wasn't blond, rather it was a shock of silvery-white. He looked over the two of them with some interest and said, "Ah. Greetings. I am Felamais, Master Patterner. What can I do for you?"

Falk walked in, nodded briefly to the man, then replied, "I'm looking for some info on this place, more specifically just what the field is that's in place and how it works. Seems some of your friends from the other side are looking to stir up trouble elsewhere, so there's reason to find a new tool for the job."

"You are most clearly not from around here," Felamais said with a smirk. "Yes, the Pattern Realm is protected by the amalgamated pattern aura which nearly all its inhabitants emit. This aura is capable of holding back the incursions of Chaos that would seek to destroy us and tear this world apart. Each person's aura in itself is not particularly strong, a single order mage being barely capable of affecting their world in the smallest way, but together, the vast Pattern that binds this world together is formed."

"Uh-huh," Falk replied thoughtfully. "So what you're working with is a gestalt that enhances the overall power level, the power in question being one that taps into the underlying structure of the world. Hmm, interesting."

Felamais gave a nod. "Now, see, the interesting part of this is that for each person's small contribution to the overall Pattern is what _they_ believe the Pattern should be. On their own, the Sekir would stagnate themselves into a perpetual, unchanging status quo. That is why they need guidance, a true Pattern Mage who can influence the Pattern and allow it to change, slowly."

"So what is it exactly that a Pattern Mage does?" Falk asked, toying with a few ideas in his mind.

"A Pattern Mage is a much stronger version of an Order Mage," Felamais replied. "While Order Mages have a very small influence on the Pattern, and are primarily concerned with its maintenance, a Pattern Mage can actually _change_ the Pattern, and guide it as they wish. Unlike Chaos Mages, who work by tearing the Pattern asunder, a Pattern Mage does this within the Pattern."

Which would explain the affinity for Void magic, Falk thought, nodding slowly. "Two different uses of the same magical talent, taking opposing approaches, and each seemingly in constant conflict. Hmm."

Felamais nodded. "For generations the Chaos Mages have opposed us, ever since the lifetimes of Kabri and Taike, in which the Pattern Mage Kabri Unmade Taike, changed the Pattern so that Taike no longer existed. But Kabri shocked the world by marrying Taike's own daughter, a Chaos Mage powerful enough to use her powers even in his presence except when he was consciously suppressing them…"

"Ancient history's all well and good," Falk smirked. "But it doesn't do a lot for a more practical understanding of the forces in question." Rather blunt, but he could really care less about the who begat who shagged who shit.

"It is important to understand, because that is the only known instance of a Chaos Mage and a Pattern Mage marrying. Their line is called the Kabrir, and while they at first seemed to have no magic of their own, they were unaffected by the Pattern, and hence were capable of changing the status quo. The pattern elves here distrusted them and exiled them."

"Right, and if they have no access to the power at work here, where does that become important?" Falk asked.

"Oh, but they still do, else Seka would not be what it is today," Felamais says with a small smile. "Though few enough of them realize my true origins, after the incident with Zuna Taike, the great creator Keolah ensured that they would not be driven down into stagnation again, for her great plan was the very existence and purpose of myself and my cousins…"

"Mm-hmm," Falk replied, wondering why the fuck they'd just gone in a big fucking circle just to tell where the damned elf had come from. Big fucking deal, that didn't get any closer to the point. "Pattern Mages, right," he said, reigning his irritation in, "Which brings us back to the point of what and how."

"Born of the forbidden union of Pattern and Chaos, I am unaffected by the Pattern and capable of guiding it without being drawn into it. What the Sekir call a Pattern Mage is merely a stronger version of an Order Mage who realizes that their own power can influence the Pattern around them, but even they are beholden to the Pattern itself."

Falk was briefly entertained by the image of putting a gun to this bastard's head and telling him to get to the fucking point, but he refrained from the impulse and smiled thinly. "Okay, you've got good genes, I think that's covered," he said, "Where do you draw this power from, and how is it manipulated?"

"The Pattern is within us and around us," Felamais. "It holds the world together. By thought and will, and more importantly by what one believes should be."

"Hmm," Falk digested that thoughtfully, considering the implications. "So, indirectly, you tap into the framework for power and in doing so end up changing things to suit your own subconscious or, in certain cases, conscious will." Now the question was whether that applied elsewhere, or just to the peculiar nature of this little hellhole.

"Indeed so," Felamais said. "During the Zuna Taike incident, a number of residents of this world travelled elsewhere to seek refuge, and some are still out there. Some returned upon hearing that this world had been restored. Apparently the ability we take for granted here is nigh-unheard of elsewhere."

"Hmm, maybe," Falk replied, thinking over the similarity to Dream with the ability to affect the Ethereal if you had enough will to do it… this just turned the same principle out on the physical side of things.

"Some of those who returned mentioned that they had been given additional training in order to enhance their abilities and allow them to direct their powers better, even letting a much smaller than usual number of Order Mages create a strong enough pattern aura over an area."

"Yeah, it'd use the same basic principles as Dream," Falk replied absently, thinking it through, "Except you move it to the physical world and use… what?" he tapped a foot thoughtfully, quirked a brow, "Creation? Damn, I bet that's it, a variant on that, with Void being the opposing side."

"Pattern Magic," Felamais said. "That is what we call it. I am not certain if those elsewhere have a name for it, and if they do what they call it."

"Yeah, that sounds like how you're doing it," Falk replied, "It's just a much more limited and purpose-driven flavor of it, takes all the flexibility out of it on the Pattern side of things. Creation and Change to make and enforce the Pattern, or Void and Change to warp and destroy it, return it to Chaos. Hmmmm." he paced restlessly as he thought it through further.

To confound matters further, the Elkandu were still unclear as to what constituted Void Magic in the first place, and had even at one point clumped Creation in there as well before realizing it really didn't make sense.

Felamais said, "Do you then come of this place they mentioned, Torn Elkandu?"

Falk stopped pacing and looked over at the elf with a smirk. "No, I'm from another backwater world out there, but I've spent the last little while in Torn Elkandu," about a decade including the time shifts, but he didn't count that, or the time spent heading over to Mezulbryst with his brood to take care of a little Rite. "That's where I ran across Raksa here, he's the one who warned about the problem."

"What problem would that be?" Felamais said, raising an eyebrow and glancing over toward the other there. The trick Falk had placed over him might fool the man on the street, but Felamais wasn't fooled at all. Not to mention that "Claw" was a rather uncommon name for upstanding pattern elves.

"Your friends on the other side seem to be looking to muscle in on other territories," Falk replied, "That's the reason I came here in the first place, to see just what it was that could keep them out."

"You mean the Keruir?" Felamais said with some alarm. "What is it that they are doing this time?"

Falk chuckled, "They found their way to the Nexus and are using it to take a look around some other worlds, presumably in the interest of moving in. That's just clean-up work, though, the source of the mess is right here and I'm toying with an idea to deal with it."

"That is not particularly good news," Felamais said. "I would hate to see their ilk get a hold elsewhere, against those who cannot defend against their powers. But how would you deal with the city of Keru? There are possibly millions there and in the surrounding areas, whose souls are turned to Chaos. The Chaos Mages emit their own type of aura as well…"

Falk smirked, "Not so difficult a problem if you look at it from the nuts and bolts side of things. Take an imprint from here, then funnel enough power through it and the entire fucking area can be converted once the proper equipment's in place. Question is whether to make it automated or allow for direction? Hmm."

Falk had clearly been spending far too much time with the books lately. The design element would be the toughest part, to come up with the broadcaster and amplifier, but use luminite as a power supply to funnel energy from the Ethereal to boost it…

"I do not understand what you are proposing," Felamais said in puzzlement.

"Okay look, say you've got something that can take an image of this Pattern and recreate it," Falk said, "Don't worry about the details, just accept that it can be done. So anyway, you take a few of these things, boost the hell out of their broadcast range and power, then put them smack in the middle of this place. With enough juice behind it, the fuckers won't know what hit em."

"Well, that's one way of going about it I suppose, but…" Felamais trailed off.

Raksa said, "What of the three Chaos Wyrms?"

"Trust me, it'll work like a fucking nuke on the place with the right image implanted," Falk replied, "They wouldn't be the same after," he chuckles, then trails off at Raksa's question to ask one of his own, "Mmkay, and just what the fuck are Chaos Wyrms?"

"They're enormous and powerful reptilian-like creatures, with color-changing scales, wings, claws, they dwell deep in the Fields of Chaos…" Raksa explained

"They strong enough to break into here?" Falk asked.

"I do not know," Raksa said. "I do not know if they ever tried, but I doubt that they _would_ have tried, they take few risks themselves, sending off their lackeys to do their dirty work for them instead." There was a bit of a snarl in his tone as he said it.

"Nice." Falk smirked. "Well let's put it this way then, take out this enemy city and make all its sick bastards a little more pliable, and these Wyrms will either have to do their own shit work or stay hiding under their rock."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "It could work. Pattern Mages never invaded deep enough into Keru territory to do much before, in enough force… But something like that would no doubt wreck, well, unhavoc?"

"Basically what you'd be looking at is another Seka," Falk replied, glancing at the elf intently, "Set the devices to continue to produce the field to stabilize and add a little mental mickey to keep the bastards from wanting to flee, all that'd be left would be the scattered remnants who were out in the field at the time." Very practical man, in a ruthless fashion.

"Well enough that," Raksa said. "Most of those in Keru are primarily complete nutcases. Those who don't like what they're doing tend to end up going down south to the much-less-militant town of Taike… and vice versa."

"I think I've got enough to work with," Falk said, "Though I should get a good reading on one of your average joes around here, so I have a template to work with." 

Felamais gave a nod and said, "If you require my assistance further in this endeavor, I will provide it. The Keruir are just bad news and I would not be sorry to see them terribly inconvenienced."

Falk turned a blank look to the elf and replied coolly, "This ain't about wiping them off the map, it's about dealing with things in the most efficient way possible. You're going to end up with some very confused and destabilized people over that way that'll be needing some help from their new-found friends. Think you can do that?"

"I did not say anything about wiping them off the map, but damned well it's going to terribly inconvenience their plans," Felamais replied with a smirk. "And such can be arranged certainly."

"Good, then we'll leave you to that," Falk replied. "Not sure just how long it'll take to put together the Pattern bomb," he smirked at the name, "But I'll drop a line when it's in place and things are ready to roll." Design and production wouldn't be a problem, really, just toss up a time bubble… He really had to send Suzcecoz a thank you note sometime.

"Very well. Good luck," Felamais said, nodding his head toward Falk. "It shall be interesting to see what will come of it."

Falk nodded and turned to stride for the door, waiting til he was outside before checking to see if the Nexus was accessible from this particular area. If not, it would be a place to check back in sometime and see about ways to cut through that interference. He could, indeed, manage to recall from here, and Raksa let out a shuddering breath once they were back in the Nexus, shivering slightly.

Falk looked over at the shapeshifter, then jerks his head in the direction of Soul's Road. "C'mon, we'll get you a drink and some food back at the office," and headed off in that direction, "You're going to want to get ahold of some training to get that under control soon, you know, the School of Thought's a good place to learn the basics."

Raksa followed after and said in a strained voice, "Take down the illusions and get me a mirror please…"

Raksa could certainly _feel_ it trying to do things to him, and he had to wonder if it _did_ do anything visible. Falk brushed the disguise away and brought up a reflective surface for the other to take a look into. Just as he'd suspected, spending even that much time within that strong of a pattern field was enough to wear away a lot of the influence Chaos had had upon him. Although his hair remained black and his eyes purple, they weren't so wild and swirling any longer, and his face was smooth and pale. He stared at his own image expressionlessly.


	9. Imposition of Order

"Looks like you were in the opposing field long enough that it undid some of the Chaos," Falk said, examining Raksa's features for a moment, then continued on to the office, "Goes to show that it's a refinement and extension of other abilities, or that those abilities don't quite work the way they're understood to. Either way, it's something to think on, hmm?"

Raksa came in unsteadily, uncertain of what to make of this all. "I don't know. I don't know what all it might have done to me, or whether it'll wear off… I was born to Chaos after all…"

"Bullshit," Falk snorted and waved Raksa to follow him back, returning to the rear office and getting a beer for him, "You were born, everything else is negotiable." He offered the bottle to the shapeshifter, "Drink this, chill out, and relax."

Raksa took a drink and tried to relax. "But everyone in the Pattern Realm is born with either Pattern or Chaos Magic innately… and always emits an aura of their kind…"

Falk shrugged as he went over to the workbench and puts away what he'd been working with before, summons his laptop to start laying out design possibilities as the time field springs into existence. "The Elkandu are born with talents of their own, or at least some of them, doesn't mean that they don't train with them. The problem I see with this Pattern Realm is that they have this talent and don't know how to use it properly."

"Chaos Mages at least tend to get more training than Order ones," Raksa muttered. "Chaos Mages are trained to do all number of things. Order Mages just kind of stand there and try to maintain the status quo. It's very dull."

"Eh, it's all very dull," Falk replied absently, makes a disgusted noise and scrapped the initial design, far too clunky, then moved on to another that looks more promising, "Even your Chaos mages are going to require years of training and study to use their wider array of powers. The Order mages sound like they're just as skilled, only more subtle about it."

"I've no doubt there's plenty of things I _could_ do that I just don't know how, even of things that I know of," Raksa said, sighing a bit and taking a drink.

"Mm-hmm, from what I saw in your aura, there's a lot of gee-whiz nifty shit you could do with the proper training and will," Falk agreed, frowning thoughtfully and tapping a finger as he studied the required resonance profile, then adjusts the design a bit further, "And just because you weren't born with other abilities doesn't mean you can't learn em."

"Really?" Raksa said, raising an eyebrow. "That sort of flies in the face of everything people in the Pattern Realm believe… they all think it's all about what you're born with, and that's immutable and unchangeable…"

Falk glanced over at Raksa with a smirk. "That's called 'the way things are' thinking, and it's a load of shit." He looked back at the design, rearranged it again, then continued, "See, thinking like that only means that you're either going to stick with the status quo like your Order mages, or say fuck it and rebel like the Chaos side. That's just human nature when placed in a cage."

"At least Taike isn't so bad about it as Keru," Raksa said. "They mind their own business and don't go fucking with everyone else. Fuck me for having been born in the Fields of Chaos near Keru though."

"Riiiight," Falk smirked. "I'm not even gonna get into the 'nature versus nurture' bullshit, or some angsty free will speech. You can either whine about your lot in life, or you can get off your fucking ass and do something about it. Getting away from those bastards was a good first step, but it sure as fuck ain't enough."

"I ain't gonna whine about it," Raksa said, draining his beer. "Least I can see well enough now the world ain't just black and white and I'm damned well not beholden to them or whatever I might be or might have been."

Falk nodded idly, scrolling through the schematics on the screen. "Mm, that's a good start, just don't forget that not being answerable to a faction doesn't mean you're not responsible for your own actions. Fuck people over, don't give a shit about anything or anyone, and you end up being just as bad as the people you got away from."

"Wasn't exactly planning on it," Raksa said. "Don't see any fucking reason to do the shit they do. I don't see what they gain from torturing and killing people like that aside from just pissing everyone off."

Falk smirked. "See that's what I like to hear, someone who understands that doing whatever the fuck you want to isn't always the best idea. Do that often enough and word gets out, well… that's when people like me end up getting involved."

"Guess they'd just had enough of me speaking my mind and wanted to send me on a suicide mission, and when I refused they kicked my ass over it and left me for dead…" Raksa snorted softly. "I wouldn't want to be involved with people who can't take constructive criticism either."

"Then you better look at being your own boss," Falk chuckled quietly, "Having to catch shit that rolls downhill ain't exactly the most fun."

"Uh-huh," Raksa said. "Damned if I know what I'll end up doing after this all is out of the way, but I'm sure something will come up. Glad to be away from there anyway."

"Well you ain't out of it yet," Falk smirked. "I'm gonna need someone to act as a guide to this Keru of yours so I can plant a few of these," he gestured to the screen where the design was coming along nicely. "After that, maybe you should take a look into seeing just what you can do if you put your mind to it."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "Right, I can do that. The Pattern Mages may have a hard time finding it to try to attack it, but I know how to get there…"

Falk snorted lightly, "See, that right there is why you don't pick one thing and stick blindly to it, you totally lose sight of the ability to do things beyond that narrow alley." He shrugged one shoulder. "It may work there, sorta, but that doesn't mean it's a particularly _good_ setup."

"I see what you mean," Raksa said. "There's no doubt plenty that they had never imagined even possible… I'll have to look into it more…"

"You might be pleasantly surprised," Falk replied, "Though the basics you'll pick up at the School of Thought leave a lot to be desired in the long run. You'll have to figure more advanced stuff out yourself or find some other way of learning it."

Raksa gave a thoughtful nod, thinking over it as he quietly waited for Falk to finish up his plans. It would certainly bear looking into, although he wasn't too sure if he was ready to rush into the more advanced things just yet certainly.

The fates smiled on Falk, the three Wyrd sisters tossing their bones in a sequence that brings a quiet grin of satisfaction to him after a relatively short period of time. He stretched as he straightened up and looked over at Raksa, "That was the hard part, now to put the thing together and make a few copies."

Raksa gave a nod, not really pretending to understand just what it is he was doing at the moment, as it was way beyond his current level of understanding, but trusting that it was going to work hopefully.

Falk called up what he liked to call his personal web daemon, the weaverling attached to the laptop, and set it to producing the design. It went happily to work, in fact calling in a few of its friends to lend a spinner to the task, and he went to take a seat while they do their thing.

"So what's happening now?" Raksa wondered.

Falk kicked back with a fresh beer, adding a little of his own blood so it'd go down, and sighed as he took a sip, "Mm, they're creating the design that I laid out, making most of the materials from scratch and my personal assistant knows where I stashed a bit of luminite." Even as he said that, one of the spiders vanished and reappeared a moment later with a sliver of the material, all that would be needed for the device. "Once they're done with it, simple process of them duplicating a few more," he continued, "And we'll be good to go."

"What are they?" Raksa wondered, quirking an eyebrow a bit and trying to watch as well as he could.

Falk took another swallow, then pointed to the critters with the neck of the bottle, "Those little guys are weaverlings, sometimes called Pattern spiders. They're a whole class of spirits back in the World of Darkness, and they're responsible for keeping things orderly and tidy in the Ethereal."

"Oh," Raksa said. Well, he figured, that would make sense for something that would assist with creating a pattern field, certainly. "There wasn't anything like that back in my homeworld that I know of?"

"The only time I've seen anything like them around here or anywhere else I've been was when I happened across some work that an Elkandu named Suzcecoz was doing," Falk replied with a thoughtful frown, "I'm not sure if they're just rare here or largely extinct or something."

That'd certainly be one thing she'd be looking to change — they were quite the handy things.

Raksa commented, "Hm. Interesting."

"They're definitely handy little buggers," Falk said, then kicked back to wait for the first Orderbomb to be completed.

It didn't take all that long, really, and the spiders moved on to creating three more, seemingly splitting into even greater numbers in an eye-watering fashion. Soon thereafter the devices were complete and the small horde of spiders departed, chittering cheerfully among themselves and he just chuckled at them.

"Awright," Falk said, pushing to his feet, "Let's see about taking care of the root of this rotten tree, shall we?" He stalked over and retrieved the first device, examining the fist-sized object intently for any signs of defect… not that he really expected any, and he pocketed the things after a minute more.

"Okay then," Raksa said, standing slowly. "Where to now then? To Keru?"

"You got it," Falk agreed. "If you'll be so kind as to think of someplace that's not likely to be a sea of instant death on arrival, I'll open a portal to take us there. The Nexus is great and all, but there's times when it pays to take other ways." He dispelled the temporal field around them and waited.

Raksa nodded and gave the coordinates he'd know they'd be able to go readily, on the inside of the Edge of the World not far from Taike. "Will need to traverse the Fields of Chaos to get there from there, but it won't be far with a little shortcut."

Falk nodded and neatly plucked the image and impression from Raksa's mind, then translated that into useable information and opened a portal. He waved the other through and would follow immediately after, letting it close behind them. The place was fairly chaotic here, but more the middle ground between Order and Chaos.

Raksa shifted into crinos form and struck off past the Edge of the World, using a touch of magic to twist the area to make it easier to traverse. "Shouldn't be long…"

Falk chuckled and followed suit, assuming a shape and appearance that's familiar to him, a scruffy-looking Glass Walker Crinos, and then darting after Raksa. He was a big fan of the idea of 'whatever works'. The scenery didn't really bother him, he'd seen some truly weird things over the years. Raksa led them down a twisting pathway through the Fields of Chaos, seeming to go around in circles for several minutes but coming out shortly in sight of a bizarre and twisted city, dark spires piercing the violently multicolored skies in warped, gravity-defying forms. The stench of death and decay hung heavily over the area — The name Keru did not mean simply 'death', it in fact meant 'murder'.

Falk crouched as they came within sight of the city, eyes narrowing and ears tilting forward as he concentrated on getting an impression of the place. Right, just about what he'd expect out of a BSD hive, so he wasn't exactly going to feel bad about forcing a little good cheer on the bastards. "We'll need to put them in four opposite corners, or roughly," he growled quietly.

Raksa gave a nod and headed off toward the nearest rough corner of the town quietly. If the inhabitants of Taike had been a little strange, those of Keru were sick, twisted, deformed, mutated, many of them looking diseased. Chaos elves, Tolvurga, even a few of the aforementioned "kitties and lizzies" were here. Falk shifted his appearance subtly to meld better with the denizens he saw, that particular ability one that he'd refined quite a bit over time. He picked up rough behavioral cues from them as well, and wasn't disappointed to find that his usual snarlishness would serve quite well here. Other than that, he remained watchful for signs of anyone watching or tailing them as he followed his guide.

Raksa's brief time in Seka hadn't served to make Raksa completely normal-looking, but he still looked a fair bit less messed up than the rest of them here. There was a field around this city much like the pattern field in Seka as well, seeming to try to reach out with madness and corruption. Not the first time Falk had felt that one, having experienced similar environments in the past when dealing with the BSDs in their Hives. The very air was acrid and polluted, tainted and smelling of corruption, yet another reminder of why he was doing this particular job without any regrets.

Raksa led him to a likely spot and gave a nod. The damned place was so twisted that the geography itself didn't even make sense, but he'd lived here his entire life and knew it inside and out. Falk took a look around for an inconspicuous spot to set the device in place, then activated the timer for one day and turned on the defensive screen. Not only would it be very difficult to find, mimicking its surroundings, but anyone tampering was likely to get one hell of a nasty surprise…

Falk nodded as everything appears to be working, then goes went over to Raksa. "Lead on."

Raksa nodded and headed on quietly through the fringes of the city, it didn't really have a solid boundary so much as it just tapered off into the fields of Chaos. Raksa led him through the twisted tunnels and streets to the next three spots in succession.

Nothing seemed out of place as he set them, so Falk nodded in satisfaction as the last of the devices was set and primed. "Now we have plenty of time to get out of here, provided you don't get us lost," he growled lightly.

"I'll hope not," Raksa replied, heading off away from and out of the city.

The city did not appear to be receding, however, and the tangled, shifting roads end up leading them deeper inside. Then they clearly sense some dark presence coiling around them as one of the enormous Chaos Wyrms fades into view…

"Well fuck," Falk muttered and came to a halt, returning to his normal form and clicking all his defenses up a notch as he looks at the… thing. Not good, not fucking good at all.

"Well, now," hisses the wyrm. "I see you have had the nerve to return here, Raksa. And with company, no less. I shall see to it that you both die… slowly…" The serpentine beast was coiled up around them, blocking off escape on foot.

This thing might or might not be more than Falk could handle, he wasn't particularly looking to find out just now, and tried the first thing that comes to mind… teleporting himself and Raksa away. If nothing else, it'd give him an idea of the kind of limits this screwy neighborhood provided. Fortunately, the teleportation attempt worked, and the two of them winked away out from the bad neighborhood of Keru and away from the unfriendly wyrm. Unfortunately, it landed them right smack in the middle of the fields of Chaos, well, insofar as it has a middle really.

"Okay, time to see if the Nexus is being kind," Falk muttered and went to try and Recall, not particularly wanting to hang around this neighborhood if he could avoid it. 

Their surroundings changed as he tried to Recall… but only to another piece of Chaos instead.

Raksa shook his head and said, "It won't work that way. Here, allow me…" He flicked out a claw and tore a gaping black gash in the very air in front of him and stepped through.

Falk traced the weave to see exactly what Raksa used to pull this little trick, studying it for a moment before stepping through. It looked to have been somewhere along the lines of Void/Motion/Dream magic. It led right directly out into the lobby of his offices in Torn Elkandu. Raksa shifted back to elf form once he was on the other side. Falk mad a note of it, storing his impression of the weave away for later reference and study, then nodded to Raksa.

"Good work, now all we do is wait," Falk said and headed to the back office, chuckling quietly, "And with any luck, we'll get to see just what effect this little party has on one of those Wyrms of yours."

"That was a little too close for comfort," Raksa said, breathing a sigh of relief. "At least those random teleports should well enough throw it off the trail of easily trying to follow us."

Falk brought up a display on the computer, thought about it a second, then entered a go-ahead sequence to turn the Orderbombs on. The same Pattern he'd imprinted on back in Seka rolled out from them in strong, steady waves, and he watched the results critically. At first, it didn't seem strong enough to counteract the chaos field of the city of Keru. Then, slowly but steadily, it started having an impact. Eventually, finally, it locked the Pattern strongly into place.

"Now that should fuck up the Wyrm's day." Falk smirked, watching the display with satisfaction, then typed up a quick message for the Pattern Mage in Seka. "Now to let em know the deed's done." He clicked send and a metallic sphere appeared above the computer, then disappeared to go and find its intended destination. Email, anytime, anywhere, no software required on the receiving end.

"Did it work?" Raksa said, peering over and looking at the display thoughtfully. "I wonder what sort of affect that'll have on it…"

"Give it a few days or weeks, then go see," Falk replied, then smirked. "Probably not a good idea just now, since we left your little friend in hot pursuit and he may or may not have been caught in the blast zone. I'll check on the transmitters myself in a few days, make sure everything's all set and working well, the power supply's good for at least a century or two otherwise."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "Yeah, not too eager to go rushing back there just at the moment myself… Damn, I need a stiff drink."

Falk snorted lightly, sets the computer to record any incoming data from the remotes, then headed for the door, "Then you need to hit the Crux, the booze isn't bad and you can generally avoid the angsty bloodsuckers in the corners."

Raksa nodded in agreement and headed out in that direction. Apparently, while they were off running around, Rettah and Keytar finished their tour of Iron City and were hanging out here again for some reason, even though they really ought to know better by now as it was a veritable magnet for freaks. At least there were no foxes or potted plants in the vicinity at the moment.

Falk recognized them, of course, and signaled a waiter as he crossed over and dragged Raksa along. "Keytar," he nodded politely, took the other name out of his memory of talking with Raksa, "Rettah," then jerked his head at the Chaos shifter with a smirk, "I hear I have you two to thank for the visitor."

Rettah gave a wave and looks up from her mug and looks over Raksa. "If he was useful, yup. If he was a pain in the ass, nope, never seen him before." She grinned innocently.

Raksa smirks a bit and grabs a drink.

"Such loyal friends," Falk smirked, hooking a chair over and sinking down to lounge in it, ordering a glass of bloodwine for himself. "On the plus side, though," he continued, "Looks like the little problem he mentioned you finding shouldn't be quite as big a headache now, and I'll be checking in on doing some cleanup of the strays."

"Oh, really now?" Rettah said with some interest, quirking an eyebrow. She glanced over Raksa and said, "Say, it just me, or do you look a little different?"

"Not just you," Falk smirked. "He ran across a lesson in Patterns, took a bit of the Chaos starch out of his scruffy hide. Probably end up a little different yet when it comes to him figuring out just how fucked up his previous worldview was and how to control it all."

Raksa looked over toward Rettah, and the fork she was using to spear a piece of meat, and said, "Hey, those metal things with the points aren't just for stabbing people with?"

Rettah snickered faintly and said, "Um, yeah…"

"They do make a good improvised weapon when all else fails though," Falk smirked and took a sip of his wine.

Raksa watched with bemused fascination as Rettah used her knife and fork to cut and eat her steak.

"And don't let the name fool you," Rettah said. "'Silverware' is usually made of steel and not actually made of silver."

"No self-respecting shapeshifter keeps any real silver in their house anyway," Keytar quipped, grinned, "Not unless you're talkin' the bullets in the gun they happen to be wearin'."

Falk snorted lightly, "And don't forget the klaives."

"I'm not planning on eating my steak with a klaive, though," Rettah said with a smirk. "So what'd you do to the crazy mutants?"

"Nothing much." Falk shrugged easily. "Just dropped the equivalent of a Pattern nuke on em. They'll be enjoying a state of affairs much like Seka for a good long while, and have no inclination to leave."

Rettah almost choked on a bit of steak and coughed a bit at that and swallowed. "Well… that's… certainly one way to deal with it. Do remind me never to fuck with you, k?" She smirked faintly.

Keytar didn't say a word, just blinked a bit as he chewed on his own food… he hadn't gotten the name for nothin', that was for damned sure. Sheesh.

Falk chuckled lightly and waved a dismissive hand, "No worries there, I don't tend to prey on anything that isn't already preying on others. Not my style or cause." He shrugged faintly and sipped.

Rettah said, "Yeeah.. No idea how you managed that, but hell I'd hate to be there right now. Eesh, our short trip to Seka was bad enough." She munched on another bit of steak and downed it with some beer.

"Not surprising, with Change as part of your nature," Falk replied. "That particular blend of power isn't real friendly to anything outside its narrow field."

"Uh-huh," she said. "We ran into some werewolves in Kelen Tarnos and Talama there who couldn't shapeshift because of the order field they were putting off, but turns out if they temporarily suppressed that they could do so just fine. Imagine their surprise to realize that they _weren't_ just smart wolves."

"Mm, lupus, that had to be fun," Falk replied. "Well at least they shouldn't have to worry about the barbarians at the gate for a while anyway. I think the fucking Chaos Wyrms are gonna have other things to think about… like where to get new cannon fodder. With any luck, the one who dropped in on us in Keru got a taste of things going straight."

"Wonder how that'll work out," Rettah said, stretching a bit. "Least that should head off many problems from that area well enough…"

"Considering the size of the thing we ran across," Falk smirked. "I ain't gonna go back and have a little chat with one until I pick up a spare SAM or two."

"Heh, can't say I blame you. I don't think I'd care to meet one of those things anytime soon, personally," she said.

Raksa had, meanwhile, grabbed his own steak, and was attempting to clumsily use the knife and fork in imitation of Rettah.

"Use the fork like you're pinning someone's hand to the bar," Falk suggested casually, "then saw away with the knife. It's a lot easier than you might think." 

Rettah had to wonder if the fellow was a lupus or something or if Keru was just such a bunch of backwoods barbarians that all they really _did_ do was stab people with their silverware and then eat with their hands.

Raksa nodded to him and tried it out.

Rettah said to Raksa, "So what're you planning on doing now that your former mates are feeling a little less chaotic?"

Now that was a question that Falk had himself, though he'd broached it briefly before and made a couple possible suggestions. There was a lot of open ground for the weird little shapeshifter, it all depended on what he decided to do about it.

Raksa munched on a bit of meat and said, "I'm not too sure. I've apparently got a lot to learn… and not even just about my potential abilities either."

"You always will," Falk replied. "At least as long as you want to keep living, stop learning and you may as well drop fucking dead. Lots of choices out there for you to make in how to go about it, though."

Raksa said, "Well, yeah, but apparently I didn't even know how people … eat food around here… Think I'd better start with the basics first…"

Falk looked over at Keytar, quirked a brow, "Malcolm still hanging around? Haven't checked in with him lately." Keytar chuckles, "Yeah, he and the horde're doin' fine. Hmm," he looks at Raksa, "Dunno about gettin' him into the lupus bootcamp, but I'm sure Malcolm'd be willin' ta help him out. Not like he doesn't deal with fuzzbutts all the time anyway."

Raksa gave a nod and carefully speared another piece of steak and said, "Where might I find this Malcolm, then? You mentioned him before I believe…"

Falk looked over at Raksa, "He's a Garou, a wolf shapeshifter, back in the World of Darkness. He runs a variety of community and help programs from a campus in the middle of Selenis." He still funnelled money that way on a regular basis in the name of the foundation, didn't really matter to him one way or the other if Malcolm was alive so long as they were still helping people out.

"I see," Raksa said thoughtfully. "Guess I'll have to seek him out then…" It would take some while to adjust to things now that he wasn't in Keru anymore, but he certainly didn't regret the moment that he decided to tell the wyrm "No" and changed his life forever.

Keytar grinned. "Yeah well, I gotta head that way sometime soon to talk to him anyway, so I wouldn't mind showin' ya the way and puttin' in an introduction. Letter of reference wouldn't hurt, though," he smirked over at Falk.

Falk replied simply, "I'll send one along."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "Thank you." The words sounded alien to him, they weren't something a Keruir generally said, but appropriate enough. He finished up his steak and drank some more beer.

Falk drained the last of his wine, set down the glass, and snapped back to his feet. "I better check on a few things," he said, turning his attention to Raksa, "Drop in sometime if you're in town, my brood can get me a message any time." He touched his fingertips to his brow in a casual salute, then turned and strode off. 

"Social sort, ain't he?" Keytar remarked with a chuckle.

Raksa said, "He doesn't seem so bad. He was considerably friendlier than I had anticipated from your description of him."

"He has his moments," Keytar smirked. "You know his mood's gone foul when every couple of words is 'fuck' or something similar. Seems pretty mellow at the moment for some reason. Go fig."

"Mh, yes… I do believe they also will need to rename Keru, the City of Murder, to something else," Raksa said. "If you two are finished eating, I am ready to go and meet this Malcolm whenever you're ready."

"Dunno, considering how it was 'liberated' and by who, the name still kinda fits," Keytar smirked and slid out of his chair. "Yeah, I'm done. Hopefully the time won't be too far off over there."

Rettah and Raksa climbed to their feet and head toward the door and for the Nexus. Raksa looked over his hand again curiously as they went, taking note of the absence of visible mutations there as well.

Keytar checked the timezone charts, hmms until he found the right one, "Looks like we're in luck, it's earlyish morning there. Unlike us sane types, the horde makes sure that everyone's bound to be awake by the crack of dawn. Me, I prefer the crack of dinnertime." He smirked and set the coordinates.

Rettah said, "Strange people. If I'm awake at dawn, I prefer it to be because I've been up all night and haven't bothered to go to bed yet…"

Raksa didn't make comment, these concepts of night and day being fairly strange ones to him.

"Same here, babe." Keytar grinned and sent them over, having chosen the slightly-altered coordinates for the underground garage where his hovercar was parked. "You get the back seat," he said, looking at Raksa over his shoulder with a grin as he headed for the car and opened a door, "Climb in."

Raksa gave a nod and climbed into the strange contraption and sat down inside uncomfortably. "What is this thing?" he wondered curiously.

"Oh yeah, definitely a lupus," Keytar chuckled. "It's a car, now buckle up, like this…" he showed how it was done, and made sure Raksa had got the idea of it.

Raksa clumsily buckled himself up and wondered, "And what's a lupus for that matter?"

Rettah chuckled quietly and didn't comment, just settling in herself for the ride.

"If he ruins the upholstery, Trigger's gettin' the bill." Keytar smirked and brought the power on and set the car slowly in motion, "A lupus is a shapeshifter who was born as a wolf," he replied, "They tend to be a little, uhhh, unfamiliar with some things."

"Oh, I see," Raksa said, not disputing that much for the moment. "But, they didn't have any 'cars' in Keru, either… And technically I was born in Vurgata form and not Vurga…"

Keytar chuckled, the car gliding out into the brightly-lit streets and merging smoothly into traffic for the short trip. "Don't sweat it, Malcolm deals with all sorts," he said, "I'm sure you won't be anything new or really unusual."

"If you say so," Raksa said. "Though I doubt he's ever seen a chaos elf before… whatever." He settled in to stare at the passing scenery.

"I doubt it'll be a problem," Keytar chuckled, pulling off down another road and bringing them into the parking lot shortly thereafter. He climbed out and popped the back door, "Hop on out, and beware the yard apes, they spring when you're least expectin' em."

Raksa clumsily manages to undo his seat belt and climbed out, saying in confusion, "'Yard apes'?" He peered about.

Rettah snickered softly and climbed out as well.

Keytar couldn't help having a little fun, especially since the time of day would guarantee that there _would_ be kids running around and they just might… he snickered inwardly but replied in a conspiratorial tone as he walked toward the door, "Vile, evil creatures with voices to shatter your eardrums, and they're sneaky buggers, stealing in from the shadows to drain your life and energy away…" He kept an eye out for any sort of movement, and when he happened to see a couple little girls walking in their direction, he let his eyes go wide. "Run! They're coming!"

Sadly, Raksa didn't buy it at all and just stood there looking at them in confusion. "What, it's just some girls…" He scratched his head in puzzlement.

Keytar laughed and grinned over at Rettah, "Oh well, can't blame a guy for tryin'. C'mon in and we'll get you acquainted with the master of the house and the dragonlady." he directed the last at Raksa and whistled merrily as he headed inside.

Rettah giggled softly.

Raksa, still thoroughly confused, headed in along with him. "Dragonlady?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm tellllllin'!" said one of the little girls that follows in after them, just close enough to hear that, and she and her playmate went streaking past with a burst of giggles.

Keytar smirked. "See what I mean? Little harridans, all of em." He rolled his eyes and went looking for an adult, a quick bit of directions later sending them to a comfortable and well-worn study and library where Malcolm was sitting in an overstuffed chair.

"Well Gaia be, two visits in the same year?" Malcolm teased lightly, setting the book he'd been reading aside and rising. "And you brought another guest this time."

Raksa gave a wave and said, "Hi. My name is Raksa. I presume you're the Malcolm I've been told about?"

"Indeed I am," Malcolm replied with a ready smile, "And who's been speaking my name in vain _this_ time?" he asked with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes.

Keytar threw up his hands in denial. "Don't look at me, it was all Trigger's idea, really!"

Malcolm chuckled lightly, "Well I'm sure Falk wouldn't send anyone my way without reason. Please, have a seat, can I get you anything?"

Raksa took a seat and said, "No, thank you, I'm fine for now. It seems you were suggested as I've realized that I appear to have quite a lot to learn, apparently. Like these strange things called 'silverware' and 'cars'…"

Malcolm looked at the man and hmmed, "Animal breed or something else to your story? Gaia knows there's been enough strangeness running around lately, and considering what it's always been like that's saying a lot!" he laughed.

"Well, they didn't really seem to use such things where I'm from…" Raksa said. "Animal? Well, I was born in Vurgata form… I don't know what you call it."

Malcolm looked over at Keytar, who just shrugged and gave the 'don't ask me' look, so he grinned slightly and turned back to Raksa, "Well what's the form like? I can tell you what it is by the description, I'm sure."

"That's the form you first saw me in," Raksa said to Keytar, and went on. "It means 'Strong Wolf', and it's really big and strong and furry and like…"

"Ah, that would be our version of Metis," Malcolm replied with a nod, "It's pretty easy to straighten out some vocabulary differences between the different shapeshifting breeds just by talking a bit."

Raksa gave a nod. "I see. Well, I'm from someplace called Keru… It isn't… well, wasn't… what you'd probably call a nice place… Though after what that Trigger fellow did to it, it'll never be the same…"

Malcolm coughed lightly. "Yes, well, Falk has never been known for being overly delicate when it comes to certain situations." He turned an intent look on Raksa. "I assume this Keru was one of those places?"

"He described it as 'the equivalent of dropping a Pattern nuke on them'," Raksa said. "They had been, apparently, rather like the Black Spiral Dancers of this world… I'd not know myself, but I know damned well the Keruir weren't the sorts you'd care to invite to tea, and if you did they'd probably just end up trying to torture you and corrupt you."

Malcolm nodded slowly. "I see, that certainly explains the situation well, and I also assume that you were trying to get away from them," he offered a small smile, "I've seen that before, and understand how difficult it can be."

"I think they finally got tired of me questioning them, and left me for dead outside the city of Taike. _They_ weren't too friendly either, threw me in their dungeon to rot, and I surely would have died there if Keytar and Rettah here hadn't come and rescued me."

"Uh-huh, and here you always claim to be _just_ a Glass Walker at heart," Malcolm directed a fond tease at Keytar, who looked decidedly embarrassed. "No matter," Malcolm smiled at Raksa, "If you're looking for help, a place to rest and heal your wounds of the spirit, you're certainly welcome here as long as you can live by the ground rules."

Raksa gave a nod and said, "I would be grateful. What rules would I have to adhere to?"

"First off, just to get it out of the way," Malcolm sobered. "The kids. Anyone who hurts one around here is in really, really deep trouble. Sometimes they fight and hurt each other, that's one thing, sometimes an adult slips and hurts them, that's another, but anyone doing something intentional is out of here at best. Clear?"

"I surely wouldn't want to hurt anyone," Raksa said.

"Alright, now that that's out of the way." Malcolm smiled again. "We're a family here, in more ways than one in the case of a good number running around, so we help each other out when we can and just try to keep the place as presentable as possible since we're all living here. Everyone pitches in, and all clean up after themselves. Otherwise we're pretty well open."

Raksa gave a nod. "Understandable. I would be happy to help as I can as well, certainly."

"Then you're welcome here," Malcolm replied. "And we'll definitely do all that we can to help you get familiarized with the little things that you might not be used to. Just be sure to yell out if something confuses or puzzles you, asking questions is all part of the learning process."

"Um… For starters, why is it called 'silverware' if it isn't actually made of silver?"

Malcolm laughed heartily, "That's one of the mysteries of life, one of the little things that the language has embraced over the years. Sometimes it _has_ been silver, or at least partly, pure silver makes for _lousy_ tableware."

"I'd guess so," Raksa said with a faint grin.

Rettah chuckled softly and stretched a bit. Everyone had to start somewhere, she figured. She had to wonder if they'd had toilets in Keru too…

Keytar grinned and shook his head at the two of them. "Well I'll leave the two of ya to sort things out. Oh, and Malcolm, keep an eye out for an email, okay? There's somethin' I want you and Patty to think over talkin' to Gadget about."

Malcolm quirked a brow in silent question, but just nodded.

Raksa inclined his head toward Keytar and said, "Thank you again."

"Hey, no prob, just don't blow it." Keytar grinned. "Good luck." He waved cheerfully and headed back out of the zoo.

Rettah grinned a bit and nodded politely to Malcolm and headed out along with him.

"Well, he seems to be getting along well enough so far…" Rettah said once outside.

"I give it a day, tops, before Malcolm has him eating out of his hand like a lost chick," Keytar chuckled fondly, "That's always been his strong point, he's the most _people_ person I've ever met."

Rettah giggled softly. "So, where to now you suppose?" she wondered as they headed away. "And I wonder where Darksong got off to…"

"Umm," Keytar replied with a blink as he headed for the car, "I'm betting that she's still in that Tinemocun place, either that or wandering around Torn Elkandu." He smirked. "Depends on how her hot, or maybe I should say room temperature, date went."

Rettah snickered softly. "Well, since we're here, any other great places around here to visit? As long as they're fox-free, I'm not feeling picky at the moment."

Keytar chuckled as he climbed in and buckled up, "Well, we could always try sneaking in to the spirit side of Arcadia again. Other than that," he shrugged, "There's the Rack, but that depends on your tolerance for leeches, and I'm sure the damncats Den Realm is interesting if you're a werecat."

"Heh, well, I'm sure I can keep my mind off war and torture long enough to not wind up somewhere unpleasant. I think." She grinned a bit.

"And if we end up in some freaky dungeon scene it's all your fault!" Keytar teased as he started the car out on the trip to the caern in the mountains, and grinned. "Or would that be my fault? I'm easily confused."

"Um…" Rettah said, snickering. "Hey, I'm game." She whistled a little tune as they drove on out.

"Don't give the Fae any ideas." Keytar smirked, letting the car carry itself along the familiar roads.


End file.
